Skipton Woods

 This wasn’t really about a good long walk this was more a happy amble so I could play about with the light and my camera, rather than just taking photographs on my phone.  I do love photographing things and never really get the time to “mess about”.  So today I decided to have a wander around Skipton Woods, I had never been before so that made it interesting in itself.

I entered the woods from just beside the Castle walls and the path is well concreted and suitable for push chairs and little ones.  As I wandered along there were lots of mini waterfalls to the side. 

The trees overhead cast lovely green reflections in certain parts.  It really was lovely. The walk went around in a loop and came back to a small dam.

 The walk back was then pretty much the way I had come.  There were lots of families out and about and quite a few dogs enjoying splashing around in the water too.

A very pleasant 2 ½ mile walk.  Lovely.

Windgate Nick

Today I’m walking with Bradford Council guided walks. We met up at 11am at Wesley Place Silsden.  It was beautiful weather – feel lucky it’s a bank holiday and good weather.  I have been up to Windgate Nick before but from the Addingham side so this was a change.  We started off along the canal.  

This is a lovely part of the canal with some pretty houses along the way.  After about ¾ mile we turned off and crossed over the canal heading up a track to some farm buildings – crossing a road and walking alongside a golf course.  I have walked here before around Swartha and Brunthwaite. However once we had crossed the golf course the walk went in a different direction and we started the pull up to the top of the moors.  

We went up through a field to come out onto a country road.

As I looked up there were people taping off areas of rocks and hill climbs – this is motorbike trialling/scrambling and there must be a meeting tomorrow that they were preparing for.  The sections taped off looked horrendous – they would be hard enough to walk up never mind go over the routes on a bike.  It was interesting see though.

From here it was over a stile and steep pull up to the seat and the plaque at the top.  This is where a de Havilland mosquito plane crashed in WW 2 – it got off course and the RAF pilot was looking for familiar landmarks to finds its way home after it had completed its mission when it caught the hill tops and spun into a dip in the moors. 

We stopped here for some lunch – it was quite cool and breezy up here.  After lunch we walked along moorside – the tops of the crags to then begin the long walk down.  In parts this was a little tricky, I had to keep my eyes on where I was walking as we were going down over rocks and narrow tracks.

At the bottom we went down through some fields to eventually arrive at Brown Bank Caravan site.  We walked through here; the static caravans were lovely with gardens and decking around them, very peaceful.  On leaving here we continued down through fields and past some garden allotments to eventually bob out on the main road through Silsden – from here we just walked back down the road the car park.  A very good 7 ½ mile walk and back down in Silsden it was lovely and warm again.  

Salter Rake

The forecast was good for today although around lunchtime there was a small squally shower. Other than that the day was perfect.  Today I headed off to Todmorden to walk up around following the historic packhorse path. 

That was the plan anyway – it didn’t turn out quite as planned but never mind it was a great day.The way forward was clear to start with – up Honey Hole Road, passing an old classic car on the way. 

The path was steep but pretty straight forward passing a Quaker burial ground on my right.

Eventually came out by the Shepherds Rest pub.

 From here the directions were go straight across through the stile and onto Langfield Common – the direction said after a minute bear right onto the well preserverd causeway of Salter Rake.  I couldn’t see it – lots of people were going straight up the hillside, no one was going on a path to the right.  So I decided to follow the crowd, this was half an hour of steep up hill walking. As I got near the top I realised where I was Gaddings Dam.  At least I knew where I was now.

So I decided to walk along the Dam banking to the right and then take a path down from the right-hand corner. I knew there was a path there as I’d taken that path before.  As I walked along the banking I saw a man towards the end taking his shorts off – I thought nothing of it really just assumed he’d been swimming and was drying off before getting dressed. Oh no – he proceeded to lay a towel out and lay in the sun – wearing nothing but a hat. As I walked past him I kept my eyes on the footpath and focussed on the way forward.  Surprising what you see when you’re out isn’t it. At the end I turned down and came to a familiar boulder, the path continued down to the crossroads of paths that were mentioned in the walk.

 So I was now back on track – I’d merely taken a detour up to the dam.  Turning left on the Salter rake and the stone slabs – the pack horse route taking salt over the pennines from Cheshire.  From here is was a steady walk down to a small hamlet and continuing down to a house dated 1805 where a Nobel prize winning scientist lived – Sir John Cockroft.

The way back from here was along the Rochdale Canal. The book said 4 ¼ miles but seeing as I’d gone wrong it had become a 5 ½ mile walk.  It was good I’m glad I went wrong and found Gaddings Dam again.

Ilkley North of the River

Yesterday had been a wash out for walking I’d driven up in the dales and every time I thought that maybe it was going to fair up 10 minutes later it had rained again. Today the sun was shining and I packed some lunch and set off to meet up at Ilkley Lido with the Bradford Council Guided Walkers Group. The day was set fair and there were 16 of us a good group.  Some I recognised from previous walks I’d done with this group in the past. Phil the leader and the Ken the back-up were both people I recognised. 

The first part of the walk was up through Middleton Woods just a steady pull emerging into a sunny field with a huge oak tree in the middle. 

We then carried on up the field to a small tarmacadam lane leading to a beautiful farm.  From here we went through a field towards Fairy Dell.  Phil suggested we keep our eyes peeled for any fairies, sadly we didn’t spot any.  

 

From here we arrived in a large field where we stopped for lunch. One sheep came over to see what we were up to but as soon as I got my camera out to take its photo it moved off – clearly camera shy (sheep are extremely photogenic and nearly always make a good photo for some reason). 

As we headed up the fields we looked across the heather moor and could see Beamsley Beacon in the distance. A little nearer was March Gill Reservoir and up ahead we could see two or three Red Kite hovering around. 

We eventually came onto a small lane down to another farm gate which took us back up onto the moor along a pretty boggy pathway to eventually go through as stile to drop back down onto a narrow back lane. 

  These pathways were not well used there were no trods in the fields so you wouldn’t have known they were public access just by looking.

This back lane quickly brought us into the small hamlet of Denton – every house here is just beautiful. 

From here we made our way back through the fields down onto Denton Old Road and back into Ilkley.  A lovely 8 mile walk, made up for yesterdays let-down,

The Forbidden Corner

Well the forecast was rain and there were one or two showers but it was quite warm outside and you can never tell the next valley could be sunny.  So we set off full load Mum, Dad, 4 children a dog and myself.  Today we were off to The Forbidden Corner and we were all very excited.  Iy was a nice steady run, with stormy clouds and patches of blue sky and sun.  We arrived around 10.30 and all fell out of the car.  Melanie had fessed up to booking not enough tickets and going through agonies before finally sorting it by e-mail yesterday.  So now everything was set fair. 

We put Albert in his back-pack and got Bernard out on his lead.  The plan being to give Bernard a good walk before we went into the Forbidden Corner (no dogs allowed in there).  We went back down the road and came to footpath signs.  Following the sign into a ploughed field which we carefully walked all the way round to a stile on the other side. We all merrily trotted through and spied a horse at the top end of the field and one at the bottom.  The horse at the top never moved so that was fine and we set off purposefully across the field.  Melanie leading the way with Bernard. Suddenly from the left – the horse at the bottom was galloping up towards us. I suddenly found myself with a girl on either side of me holding on and Melanie had Bernard who had adopted a strangely submissive position.  The horse circled around Melanie and reared up in front of her.  He was massive; he landed back on all fours and pranced around.  Time for a quick exit back through the stile we had just come through with the horse still prancing and rearing around us.  When we were back safely in the ploughed field Melanie’s comment was you now when then they say you should exercise enough to raise your heart rate? Well I think I’ve just and my exercise for today. We now retraced our steps back across the field and headed up towards the hill tops. 

  We were definitely in race horse country there were signs everywhere warning about young racehorses and to keep your dogs on leads. We passed a few horses coming down the bridleway we were walking up.  They were beautiful but very skittish.  When we got up to the top we could see the Middleham gallops and so we took a walk around part of them before cutting back down towards the car park – on the way we passed some starting gates which I guess they use to get the horses used to being in them before going into races proper. 

Back at the car park we had a leisurely picnic lunch before going into The Forbidden Corner, it was everything we had hoped. 

 Once we got going around we understood why you don’t get a map of the place at the entrance.  The whole thing is just a huge maze of tunnels, paths, stairs and surprises.  A map would just totally ruin the illusion.  

Finally after 2 ½ hours of going in, out up and down we stopped for an ice cream before heading back to the car. We came home in the early evening sun to a fish and chip supper to end the day.  Surprisingly we had walked 5 miles and we all needed a rest. Brilliant day I thoroughly recommend it to anyone.