free to be able to rate and comment on reports (as well as access 1:25000 mapping).
I've been walking in the Howgills but I thought I'd ride the train to stretch my horizons. The trouble was finding a route with some decent summits, that could be achieved between trains and allowed a pint, but not more, before boarding.
Routes with Pen-y-Ghent were too long or too short, and I'd been on Ingleborough last year. So I came up with Dent to Ribblehead taking in Great Knoutberry and Whernside. The first of these is deeply unfashionable, the other is the least regarded of Yorkshire's big three. The route looks a bit odd, as it starts off heading away from the end point, but it fits the criteria.
Off the train at Dent, and comforting to note that it's Englands highest station, giving a start point in excess of 300 metres. There's a road at first, then a dogleg to get a path to the summit. That was an hour, which seemed slow for such easy terrain, but I worked it out and I was well ahead of Naysmith. I enjoyed the hill, round, featureless, but a good if misty viewpoint and I saw peewits, buzzards, golden plovers and more. My next hill looked distant and unattractive.
Again a dogleg leaving the hill, a path being preferable to soggy tussocks. As I reached the bottom of the glen, I was impressed by this viaduct, less so with the moorland ascent that it revealed. I'd worried about getting on to the open access land above the green fields but that didn't turn out to be a problem. I find the Open Access regulations as inscrutable as the modern off-side law.
I was toiling over tussocks till I met a shooting track I'd been aiming for. It was welcome and progress was swift.
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- Great Knoutberry and welcome track
At its top end I encountered this sign, facing up towards the Craven Way, miles from anywhere..
Was it legal? Did Open Access allow you on the moor but not on the track? I mulled over this as I launched myself on to tussocks again. I'd been going to go round the Craven Way to A Pennine Journey but the track was a bit thick with ramblers.
I was spot on to a Whernside Tarn, and I danced up the hill to Whernside itself. Suddenly there were a lot of people, all behaving like they were on the London Underground and avoiding eye contact. I mean, all I was saying was "Hi, how you doin'?" Only responders were a Northern Irishman and another Scot.
I took a picture of the Ribblehead Viaduct. I suspect this is compulsory.
The stairs down Whernside are well constructed but steep. I did not raise my eyes once, till I was on level ground. Cutting north to Ribblehead I lost the Three Peak crowds and had a good gas with a local who was rebuilding a dike.
There's lot of useful freight travels this railway line and I tried to take a picture but I've never really mastered cameras.
A pint at the inn, then I hopped the train. An enjoyable day, but the bits of honeypot path on Whernside are well worth avoiding. I can't see me ever going to Pen-y-Ghent.
