Gargrave (and a walk up one of Yorkshire’s three-peaks)

Apart from making sure we spent time with my Mum and Dad we did very little else on Wednesday so we could have a day chilling.

Thursday saw us up early as we were walking up Ingleborough – one of the three Yorkshire peaks; at 2,372 feet it is the second highest of the three.  There are several routes up to the summit and we chose to take the route up from Clapham.  It’s just under 10 miles there and back and takes in some interesting limestone scenery.

Our target for the morning

It was a cooler day than we have had for many weeks which was the reason we chose Thursday to do the walk.  Mind you, it was still warm and, for once, there was no breeze, so we so found the going clammy.  It was tee shirts and shorts the whole way but, rest assured, we had warm and wet weather gear in our rucksacks just in case.  We have been caught out on hill climbs before with sudden weather changes and it never ceases to amaze us that people still ignore the warnings and walk up in skimpy clothing and obviously nothing but sandwiches in their bags.

It was quite hazy so not good for views – I think we were rather spoilt on our two recent climbs up Ben Nevis and Scafell Pike 😉

After about a mile we passed the entrance to Ingleborough cave, an impressive show cave that we have visited before, but we carried on past it this time.  It probably would be a bit disappointing with the lack of water as a lot of the impressiveness is gained from the underground water passages.

Clapham beck emerging from a cave just past the entrance to Ingleborough cave

Next was Trow Ghyll:

Karen coming up the dry gorge of Trow Ghyll

A little further on and we were out onto the open moors and walking across a limestone pavement.  This was followed by a short detour to see Gaping Ghyll, one of the wonders of the UK caving system.

The entrance to Gaping Ghyll – hardly any water in Fell beck that normally cascades over and down the pot

Fell beck that runs into the pothole joins up with other underground streams and emerges as Clapham beck by Ingleborough cave in the earlier photo.  Before Gaping Ghyll was formed, the water stayed above ground down to Clapham, forming the gorge at Trow Ghyll in the earlier picture.

I have always been fascinated by potholes and feel that I wouldn’t be frightened to be a potholer.  Quite the reverse for rock climbing which I would dread.  I suppose it’s the difference between being inside (confined) and outside (exposed).  Soon after leaving school I lived on a Yorkshire Dales farm as a farmhand and spent many a happy hour following moorland streams looking for the next pothole they would disappear down and then following the dry stream bed to where the water reappears as a spring.

The descent into Gaping Ghyll is over 100 metres making the Fell beck waterfall the highest unbroken waterfall in England.  The chamber at the bottom is large enough to hold York Minster! Local caving clubs set up two sessions a year for Joe Public to be winched down one at a time to the artificially lit chamber and I am definitely up for the next session in the middle of August – one of my lifelong dreams (or bucket list ticks as they are called these days).

At the summit we took our obligatory summit selfie and had our picnic lunch.

Summit selfie

Hazy view from the summit towards Whernside, the highest Yorkshire peak

Next week I will be walking up Pen-y-ghent (the third Yorkshire peak) with my middle son Steve as he has never been up there before.  The following week Karen and I plan to walk up Whernside as neither of us have been up before.

Buddy has now been up the three national peaks (Ben Nevis, Snowdon and Scafell Pike) and two of the Yorkshire peaks (Pen-y-ghent and Ingleborough) in the last year so he is becoming a well mountained dog.

The top of Ingleborough is a plateau so you have to be careful which direction to take. We almost took the wrong path going down and that was on a relatively clear day.  We knew we were heading for two large cairns where we should turn right to find our track, but we veered slightly the wrong way as we set off and headed for the wrong pair of cairns.  It’s quite easy to see how people get lost especially if they don’t carry a compass.

Looking down to the Ribblehead viaduct on the way down

The Ribblehead viaduct is one of the wonders of the Settle-Carlisle railway which is a must for any lovers of hill and mountain scenery (or steam engines on the right days).  Over 2,000 men were employed to build the viaduct which took four years and led to the loss of many lives, some say 100’s but no one really knows.  Local churches had extensions to their graveyards to take the extra bodies.  A shanty town called Banty Moss was erected near the viaduct to house the men and their families and some traces can still be found today.

On the way back down, we came across two young hedgehogs in different locations.  This was the first time either of us had seen hedgehogs out in the wild.

  

Walking back through Trow Ghyll we stopped to talk to two climbers.  I asked them if they were going up or down.  They replied that they hoped they would achieve the same distance in both directions 😉  I hadn’t phrased my question concisely (the one drawback of being retired) as I was cleverly trying to find out if they were rock climbers or potholers.  I rephrased the question as, ‘Are you climbing inside or outside?’.  Still no good as they didn’t understand the concept of inside, so I had to explain.  In the end it turned out they were rock climbers.

Whilst on the moors we saw lots of butterflies, mainly green veined whites, but we also saw a couple of small heaths and dark green fritillaries.

My daughter Sophie had been butterflying yesterday and saw her first hedge brown of the year

Talking about insects, we find that there is always one week of the year that we get plagued by flies on the boat and this year it seems to be this week ☹  

Walking back to the boat later we were reminded how lovely it is that the towpaths aren’t manicured on this stretch of the Leeds & Liverpool canal.  Leaving the towpath uncut creates wildlife corridors as well as nectar plants for insects. Some boaters get upset as they expect the banks to be cut to make mooring easier, but we carry shears and secateurs in case we need to cut anything back.

Plenty of diverse wild plants on the towpath behind our boat

When we got home we checked the day’s emails and found one from CRT saying that due to the lack of rainfall and consequent water shortage the canal will be closed from Gargrave to Wigan for all of August and maybe longer.  This means we need to check our plans for the next few weeks. Some people will blame CRT for lack of maintenance, but CRT cannot be blamed for the weather and, to be fair, the local lockies have done a good job around here keeping the pound levels up.  One, in particular, has taken it on himself to make sure we have been OK whilst we have been moored in his area for the last few weeks.

The majority of boats that pass seem to be hire boats from bases below Gargrave so, even though holidaymakers will be affected, they will get the chance to go the other way and down the famous locks at Bingley and into Leeds.

After coming in for the evening we looked outside and were glad that Buddy wasn’t still out there.

  

Maybe we will have a manicured lawn by the morning 😊