We love the Yorkshire Dales, it’s our go-to holiday destination. Lots of things to see and places to walk. This break was in Dentdale, somewhere that we’ve been near but not actually walked around before.
Dent itself is a beautiful little village. The only proble is the narrow, cobbled high street which barely has room for one vehicle in each direction so, when we met a tractor pulling a muckspreader on our first way through it didn’t bode well. The other journeys through the village were better with us only having to back up once.
Why we expected the weather not to be wet, I don’t know but it rained every day at some point in time or other with Sunday (our first day) getting us thoroughly soaked, something our boots never fully recovered from.
However, the cottage was ideally situated and there were excellent walks right from the doorstep. We bought a Pathfinder Guide for the area (Yorkshire Dales – Outstanding Circular Walks) and a website (www.komoot.com) which gave a number of routes around and the OS Website has hundreds of routes in the area. OL2 is the map you need and we would always recommend the OS Maps app which allows you to easily find where you are. (The only thing is that we have to carry a battery so that the phone doesn’t die halfway through the day, perhaps indicating that I could do with a new phone.
Right, our first walk from Dent took us up towards Flintersgill, then along the Occupation Road through Gawthrop, down to the river Dee and back to to Dent a round trip of around eight miles by which time (as I said) we were thoroughly soaked and happy to be back for a cup of tea and a warm up in the cottage.
The following day (as part of the attempts to dry out), we went to Barbon for a shorter walk through Barbondale. The roads are all narrow single-track roads but excellent for fuel economy. So off we set, following another route from the Pathfiner Guide, from the village of Barbon (there’s a convenient car park) round past Barbon Manor where the woods are full of pheasant for shooting, round, crossing Barbon Beck and back, a total of around 6 miles as we tried (unsucessfully) to extend the route where we had to cross the beck.
The final walk of the week took us back around Dent but this time went Eastwards. Starting from the cottage, into Dent, across the river and then continued along the river on the far side from the cottage. Our original plan was to cross the river at some stepping stones but the river was high so the stepping stones were nine inches or so under water so we continued further along, crossing at a footbridge up into Deepdale, past Scow, back through Slack and back to the cottage. On this day we only got rained on once but it was very heavy.
I tried to take some videos of low flying jets around Dent but missed. I’m not sure if they were Typhoons or F-35s. I think the latter but I didn’t know (at the time) what to look for and I can’t say that I was expecting to see them flying around (the quiet of the countryside broken by low flying aircraft). However, they were impressive.
Anyway, that was the week. Somewhere we’ll go back to again.
Obviously, when we got back home, the tomatoes had continued to ripen (another 2kg making 27 so far) and the french beans gave us another picking but the courgettes had suffered in the wind (and I’ve pulled up the plants). End of the season in sight.