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My wife kindly dropped me off on Gayle Moor at Newby Head Moss so that I could make this an end-to-end walk over the two Hewitts to the south of Hawes. This was cloudy but dry late November day with the route starting from the road at 400 metres elevation. One of the notable differences between the Pennines and the Lakes is that a number of the routes start (and finish on a circular) from a higher point so the elevation gains are less and the grass or track descents tend to be quicker.
I was quickly into low visibility conditions as the Pennine Bridleway rose above 500m as I headed east towards the Roman Road above Oughtershaw Side.
I joined the road for only a brief moment in before heading north, now on the Pennine Way. The trick here is to make a good decision on when to break right to reach the top of Dodd Fell. I reckon I was tempted far to early by a track following the fence and therefore ended up wandering in more or less the right direction but across a large expanse of slowly rising wet grass and peat. If I was doing this again I would stay with the Pennine Way for a good kilometre from the junction with the Roman Road and then strike east directly to the top of the fell.
Rapidly leaving Dodd Fell in quite dense cloud I now needed to stay with the 600 metre contour line heading south east to seek the fence bordering the mine workings prior to finding a route to join the Roman Road at North Gate. All of this was in glorious cloud and I have to say the route off Dodd Fell was not the easiest underfoot. However, this rather surprising high level tarmacked road provided much easier going before breaking off on a clear bridleway to the right, shortly before the road starts a steep descent to Gayle.
I followed the bridleway to the fence at the 586m point and picked up a track up to the top of Drumalrace, the second Hewitt of the day. There are two choices for picking a route across Wether Fell off the summit, so I chose to cut back down to the bridleway to the south of the hill before taking the path heading north east across the moor towards Burtersett. You just have to be careful to spot the path junction which then follows a series of fields directly into Gayle. This is a really attractive finish to the walk with Hawes slowly but surely coming in to view as the clouds cleared.
If this had been a circular walk I would simply have followed the Pennine Way out of Gayle to Dodd Fell which is probably slightly shorter in distance but requires an additional 120m of climbing. I rather expect that this would make a great 2 hour jog/walk on a summer evening.
