Walks in Satron
From easy city strolls to challenging trails, discover the best of Satron on foot.
Walk: Kisdon Gorge
A fantastic circuit of Kisdon Gorge in Swaledale, visiting traditional Dales villages and cascading waterfalls, exploring a hidden gill and enjoying stunning views from the atmospheric ruins of ‘Crackpot Hall’. The Route what3words for start point: ///engulfing.prompts.whistle Start Point: Muker in Swaledale Finish Point: Muker in Swaledale Distance: 7 Miles GPX Route Map explorekisdonDownload Walk Description The walk sets off from the charming Dales village of Muker and begins with a gentle stroll through traditional hay meadows, which are filled with a stunning array of wildflowers in late spring and early summer, and along the banks of the infant River Swale. Leave the main track to explore the narrow paths along steep-sided Swinner Gill, taking you past tumbling cascades to reach a beautiful set of waterfalls and the crumbling remains of an old smelt mill. Having gained height you now get stunning views down the length of Kisdon Gorge as you head towards the atmospheric ruins of Crackpot Hall. On re-joining the main bridleway along the gorge, you soon reach pretty little East Gill Force, where the beck leads you downhill back to the River Swale. A short detour gives you chance to explore the remote village of Keld with its lovely hillside setting before stopping to visit impressive Kisdon Force. Take the high-level path along the western side of Kisdon Gorge, which offers yet more fantastic open views over the gorge and along Swaledale. Drop back into Muker for a well-earned drink at the friendly Farmers Arms! This is a fantastic circular walk and, despite its relatively modest length, can easily take most of a day if you spend plenty of time enjoying the villages, exploring Swinner Gill, soaking up the views and admiring the waterfalls (or even taking a quick dip!).
Walk: Great Shunner Fell
As the third highest peak in the Yorkshire Dales, Shunner Fell is a great peak to get in the bag whilst in the Yorkshire Dales. This scenic walk starts from the small village of Hardraw, near the impressive Hardraw Force waterfall, the highest unbroken waterfall in England. Follow the well-marked Pennine Way as it winds through rolling hills and rugged terrain, offering an invigorating hike of around 8 miles. The Route what3words for start point: ///baroness.drop.rebounder Start Point: Hardraw, Hawes DL8 3LZ Finish Point: Hardraw, Hawes DL8 3LZ Distance: 8 Miles GPX Route Map Great-Shunner-FellDownload Walk Description As you ascend, the path becomes steeper, rewarding walkers with increasingly spectacular views of the surrounding Wensleydale landscape. Upon reaching the summit of Great Shunner Fell, you are greeted with breath-taking panoramic views that extend across the Dales. On a clear day, you can see as far as the Lake District and the distant hills of Northumberland. The route is composed of a mixture of well-trodden paths and some more challenging sections, making it suitable for walkers with a reasonable level of fitness. Along the way, the area's natural beauty is complemented by rich wildlife, including curlews and plovers. Ensure you are prepared with appropriate footwear, weather-appropriate clothing, and sufficient water, as the weather can change quickly in the area. The walk back to Hardraw retraces the path taken to the summit.
Walk: Muker, Keld & Kisdon
This walk takes in Muker, Upper Swaledale, Crackpot Hall, Keld and Kisdon. The Route What3Words for start point: ///unions.happening.bake Start Point: Muker, Swaledale Finish Point: Muker, Swaledale Distance: 6.5 Miles GPX Route Map muker-keld-and-kisdonDownload Walk Description Muker is a lovely village in Upper Swaledale, a jumble of stone cottages and a great country pub, all set amongst magnificent fells and valleys. The finest hay-meadows in the Yorkshire Dales, arguably in England, can be found around the lovely village of Muker in late spring. Here, the small fields along the flat valley floor are a mass of bright yellows, blues, reds and whites. Buttercup, forget-me-not, cow parsley, clover, common bird’s-foot trefoil, meadow cranesbill to name just a handful. Cut later than normal to allow the wild flowers and grasses time to seed, these meadows are fiercely protected. Please keep to the footpath and under no circumstances pick any of the wild flowers. Interestingly, the word ‘muker’ means ‘meadows’ in Old Norse - named by the Viking settlers who came here over 1,000 years ago. This walk encapsulates the Yorkshire Dales with hay meadows, riverside walks, field walls and barns, woodland, waterfalls, windswept summits and superb views. Field-paths lead up through the deep U-shaped valley of Swaledale into a narrow wooded gorge near Keld with numerous waterfalls all around, in particular Catrake Force, Kisdon Force and East Stonesdale Force; ‘keld’ means ‘springs’ in Old Norse. From the hamlet of Keld, our route follows a superb track up over Kisdon Hill with breath-taking views across Swaledale towards the high fells of Lovely Seat and Great Shunner Fell. The final descent is a fitting end to this walk with the deep valley of Swaledale gently curving away into the distance and the grey rooftops of Muker nestling in the valley below. This track across Kisdon Hill once formed part of the ancient ‘Corpse Way’. Before the church was built at Muker during the reign of Elizabeth I, mourners had to carry their deceased relatives to the nearest burial ground at Grinton, a journey that is believed to have stemmed from Norse mythology – it mirrored the journey of the soul from earth to the next life.
Walk: Swaledale Yomp
This spectacular walk through Swaledale is varied with open moorland, waterfalls, steep rocky and exposed hillsides, river banks, woodland, walled fields and lead mining spoil heaps. The Route what3words for start point: ///towel.caked.skies Start Point: Muker Finish Point: Muker Distance: 13 Miles GPX Route Map swaledaleyomp3Download Walk Description The views throughout are exceptional looking down into Gunnerside Beck, Swinner Gill and the mighty Swale. It is challenging due to the exposure and length of walk which has two significant ascents – one now with flagstone steps. The history, wildlife and sheer beauty are hard to beat. The name Muker comes from the Norse word meaning “narrow cultivated field.” A skeleton found on Muker Common with flints next to it is evidence of early inhabitants from the Bronze Age. In the 18th century lead mining became more important and Muker was also a major centre for hand knitting during this period. The word Swale is Anglo-Saxon for rapid and this dale was Wainwright’s favourite. The flower-rich hay meadows around Muker are of international importance and are carefully protected. Farmers receive grants which allow them to farm the land by traditional methods, without using artificial fertilizers. The history of lead mining in the area goes back as far as Roman times and continued until the early 1900’s when cheaper imports from overseas ended the industry inthese parts forcing locals to move abroad or into farming. The route goes through Rukin wood before reaching Keld and was named after Mr Jack Rukin, the postman who walked this route to deliver mail to the farmers on this moor and to the Tan Hill pub in the 1930’s. Crackpot Hall is a Norse word meaning a pot with crows living in it and was originally built as a hunting lodge. It has now got grant funding to help preserve the ruins. The many tunnels in this area extend 400 m underground and were built in 1647. The ruin at Swinner Gill is an old smelting mill. The ford at Ramps Holme Water was part of the “Corpse Way” where bodies were carried from farms in Upper Swaledale to the churchyard at Grinton.
Walk: A Pennine Journey
From Settle to Hadrian's Wall and back the walk showcases the wonderful variety of walking experiences available within northern England with its mountains, moorland and river valleys. The Route what3words for start point: ///watchdogs.gifts.trash Start Point: Settle station Finish Point: Settle station Distance: 247 Miles GPX Route Map pennine-journey-complete2Download Walk Description A Pennine Journey is a circular long-distance footpath in northern England originally devised and walked by the Yorkshire-born Lakeland fells guide book writer Alfred Wainwright in 1938. It is 247 miles (388 km) long, starts and ends at Settle in North Yorkshire and traverses some of the most delightful terrain that northern England has to offer. Of its 247 miles route over 220 miles lies within the Yorkshire Dales National Park, the North Pennines Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty and Northumberland National Park. During the route it touches on sections of the Pennine Way and Hadrian’s Wall Path National Trails and crosses Alfred Wainwright’s Coast to Coast Walk at it’s half way point at Keld. Yorkshire highlights on its way north are Hull Pot, reputedly the largest hole in England, followed by stretches of Wharfedale and Swaledale before the route leaves Yorkshire soon after passing the 17C Tan Hill Inn – at 1732 feet the highest pub in England. On its return to Settle it enters the Yorkshire Dales at Garsdale, which has a station on the Settle-Carlisle Railway Line, passes close to the book town of Sedbergh before arriving back in limestone country at Ingleton after the ascent of one of the Three Peaks – Whernside. The final day from Ingleton sees the ascent of another of the Three Peaks, Ingleborough, before the journey ends back in Settle.
Wainwright's Yorkshire Masterpiece
Longer than the Coast to Coast, more varied than the Pennine Way – and circular. Nick Hallissey discovers the emotional story behind Wainwright’s Pennine Journey, then grab your boots and try it yourself. The name of Alfred Wainwright might be more synonymous with a landscape on the other side of the M6. But long before he became famous for his Lake District guides, he embarked on an epic circular walk through the Yorkshire Dales and the Pennines – a walk that uncovered some of the greatest landscapes in these Broad Acres. A walk that is only now being rediscovered and treasured. Photos: Tom Bailey The gathering storm The story begins in September 1938. The world was heading for war. Newspapers and radios blared with talk of Hitler; of rearmament, air-raid precautions and decontamination squads. As one man remarked: “You turned on the news and sat waiting, with an inside quaking and empty.” That man was Alfred Wainwright, a 31-year-old clerk to the borough treasury of Blackburn. Already a lover of the hills of Yorkshire, it was to these very hills that he looked for escape from the dreadful tidings on the radio. In the steps on the Romans After taking a train from Blackburn to Settle at the bottom edge of the Yorkshire Dales, he set off on foot with a plan to walk to Hadrian’s Wall, some 110 miles to the north. To get there, he would follow the eastern edge of the Pennines. To come back to Settle, he’d follow the western edge, thus creating a grand circular walk up and down the backbone of England. If that didn’t get Hitler out of his head, he had no idea what would. Halfway along the route, Neville Chamberlain came back from Munich declaring “peace in our time”, and like everyone else’s, the heart of Alfred Wainwright suddenly lifted. But by the time he got back to Settle, that peace had been torn up, and Britain was at war. Published walk Back home, Wainwright committed the whole thing to paper, writing a book titled A Pennine Journey. It was a meticulous account of a magnificent walk. It was the story of the people he met and the meals he ate. But it was also a superb documentary on the build-up to the Second World War and what it did to the hearts and minds of those living through it. There was only one problem. He didn’t want anyone to read it. The Lost Manuscript The book was written “not for others to see but to transport my thoughts to that blissful interlude of freedom”, said he. He showed it to a select group of work colleagues, but the war came and went, and the book lay in a drawer until 1986. By then, he had become A Wainwright, the guide-poet-artist of the Lake District. Also in the interim, the Pennine Way had been created, with Wainwright himself writing a guidebook to it. The Way shared fragments of the route of his old Pennine Journey – but only fragments. And it was linear, from Edale to Kirk Yetholm, rather than circular. And crucially, it wasn’t his own creation. So in 1986, when Wainwright and his publisher were discussing projects to help raise funds for his animal rescue charity, he remembered the Pennine Journey. It emerged from the drawer and at his insistence, was published word for word and unedited. Thus it’s an in-the-moment eyewitness account of Britain’s national psyche and the landscapes of the Pennines, frozen in 1938 and thawed out 48 years later. But at this point it’s still just a narrative. It was never intended to be a practical guide to walking the route. Modern update For that we have to skip forward 12 more years to 1998, and meet compulsive long-distance walkers David and Heather Pitt. Having walked almost every other mega-mile trail that Britain has to offer, the indomitable Pitts were looking for something new. Wainwright fans both, they decided to see if they could translate the Pennine Journey into something they could follow. It took a colossal effort of map-reading, cross-referencing and improvisation, but they not only managed it; they loved it. And in 2004 they convinced the newborn Wainwright Society to adopt the Pennine Journey as an official project, with a guidebook edited by David and Heather, and sections checked and updated by volunteers. Since then, the Pennine Journey has attracted a cadre of devoted fans, and waymarkers have appeared at key points along the trail. But last year – 25 years after the death of Alfred Wainwright – something has happened that is likely to make his first big walk go stratospheric. It’s just gone on the OS map. The journey today “I would never, ever call it my baby,” says David Pitt. “This is Wainwright’s journey; his story. That said, it has been part of our lives for 20 years or so, so I am very attached to it. Some people have called it an obsession, but I don’t think it is. I just love this route and I want others to see it too. Evangelism, maybe, but not obsession!” And it has been a team effort. David says the project would be nothing without the efforts of the volunteer route-checkers, and is full of praise for illustrators Ron Scholes and Colin Bywater, who provided the beautiful Wainwright-style maps and drawings for the guidebook. But the inclusion of the Pennine Journey on OS mapping is perhaps the biggest step forward in its history. It makes the route that much more obvious to anyone scouring a Pennine map for a good idea, and it gives the Journey equal weight against the far better known Pennine Way. David loves the Way, but he thinks the Journey has more to offer. “It goes to many places that the Pennine Way goes nowhere near: Buckden, Semerwater, Ingleborough, Weardale and Mallerstang, to name just a few,” he enthuses. “But it also includes a lot of the must-see highlights of the Way, so you don’t miss out – like Pen-y-ghent, High Force, Cross Fell and the very best bits of Hadrian’s Wall. “I also like the circular nature of it: the fact that you do this journey and it brings you back again, which of course the Way doesn’t.” The details The Journey is 247 miles long; 20 miles shorter than the Way. It breaks down into 18 sections, in line with Wainwright’s own walk, and most are between nine and 15 miles. The shortest (Day 1, Settle to Horton) is 7.5 miles, while the longest (Day 17, Sedbergh to Ingleton) is a whopping 17.5 miles. But there are options for downsizing some of the chunkier sections. For example, the 17.5-mile stretch from Buckden to Gunnerside can easily be broken at Bainbridge (in fact I urge you to try this, because Low Mill Guesthouse in Bainbridge is one of the loveliest places that I’ve ever stayed). Wainwright himself didn’t measure in miles but in valleys. Essentially each stretch of the Journey hops from one valley to another, taking in the likes of Ribblesdale, Wharfedale and Wensleydale; Swaledale, Weardale and Teesdale; the Eden Valley, Chapel-le-Dale and the Mallerstang Valley. And thanks to some slight tweaks by David and Heather, the route also climbs all of the Yorkshire Three Peaks. The Pennine Way only climbs one. GPX Route Map penninejourneyDownload Hadrian's Wall And up at the apex is Hadrian’s Wall – or at least, the sensational ten-mile stretch of the wall from Housesteads fort to the village of Greenhead, in which the wall lollops along the beetling crags of the Whin Sill. The wall was Wainwright’s primary objective; he’d never seen it before. There’s almost an irony there: he opens the book by comparing Hitler with Alexander the Great – remorseless empire-builders who sought to invade every corner of the worlds they knew. And yet his destination on this walk to forget all that was the very symbol of empire-building; a relic of another set of conquerors who wanted to possess and control everything they saw. But he was doing this before English Heritage (#ad) was there to protect the wall and tell its story. Before there was a Hadrian’s Wall National Trail. Before there were national parks, visitor centres or even walking guidebooks as we would know them today. In 1938, vast tracts of the countryside were still in private ownership and fenced off from public access. This all makes Wainwright’s endeavour even more remarkable: a man following his own path, using his wits, surviving on cartographical skill and occasional acts of charity; threading together corpse roads, green lanes and the trackways of forgotten industry. And yet despite all this mental agility, the Journey did its job. With every mile, come rain or shine, Alfred Wainwright’s mind found peace. Our own Pennine Journey I walked several stretches of the Pennine Journey with photographer Tom Bailey, using David’s newly-reprinted guidebook and relishing the lack of all the hardships mentioned above. We met up with David and longtime PJ helper Jill King and walked from Buckden in Wharfedale to Bainbridge in Wensleydale. It’s one of the loveliest days of the trail, and exemplary of its nature as an exercise in valley-hopping. From one splendid dale to another across high, wild moorland: that’s what this journey is all about. Along the way is the unexpected treasure of Raydale, the secretive offshoot of Wensleydale that’s home to the fine sheen of Semerwater and England’s shortest river, the Bain. So, brain off, eyes and ears open, enjoy. As an appetiser to the grand enterprise of the Pennine Journey, the day was delicious. The urge to free up two and a half weeks to do the whole damn thing is nagging at me as I type. It would be contrived to liken today’s era of global anxiety to the circumstances in which Wainwright undertook his Pennine Journey. But with every awful thing we hear about on our radios, it’s hard not to feel that going for a massive walk is a brilliant idea. On the other hand, you don’t have to be unhappy to go on this walk. And you don’t have to be alone either: David and Heather will vouch for that. The truth is, whatever your mental landscape when you set out from Settle, I’m pretty certain that by the time you return, the world will look and feel a lot better. It’s not about the destination, you see.It’s about the Journey. Nick Hallissey and Tom Bailey are the deputy editor and photographer forCountry Walking Magazine.