Words & Photos Ronald Turnbull

December 03 2009

Fellwalking is about leaving the urban sprawl and the busy valley lands behind you. Except when you do it in Yorkshire. In Yorkshire, heading for the high car park and then uphill, you miss half the point of it. Yorkshire’s hills are cragged wild limestone – but so are Yorkshire’s villages.

And why walk the steep side of Whernside, when you can walk its long gentle ridgeline out of Ingleton and get twice as much Whernside for your trouble?

There’s a charge for the waterfalls path up the Swilla Glen, and some of us think charging for hills is an infringement of our human rights; so it’s fortunate that the ticket-issuer doesn’t arrive until 9am. Anyway, having done it that way last time, I parked at the foot of Kingsdale this time. Having walked town pavements for the working week, I was now eager to do the same thing, but on yellow-grey limestone.

Keld Head Scar is wild Yorkshire at its weirdest. What should be a bog turns out to be bone dry, and huge chunky boulders. Just how much gnarliness can you get into a two-metre thorn bush? That bush grows out of the small crag that leads up to limestone pavement and lawnlike terraces with tiny wildflowers.

But Yorkshire is also gritstone. Along Gragareth, you switch from smooth gentle green to coarse brown bog-grasses; the change in the underlying geology is confirmed in the stone wall alongside. This is the Yorkshire border. On the left, the ridgeline drops Lancs-wards; and since Coniston Old Man was snatched into Cumbria, Gragareth is, despite being half in Yorkshire, the top of Lancashire.

After Great Coum, the crossing of Kingsdale’s top is via Green Lane, not so green as its name due to the trail bikes. (Still, the off-track alternative is Foul Moss, which obeys its name completely.) A short but stiff ascent leads onto Whernside.

Whernside is a well-developed hill, with a built-up path along it. But its long south-east ridge is like an embarrassing party that nobody wants to be at. After 1km the big path turns off down to the Hill Inn and Ingleborough; and the remaining ridge-path gradually realises it, too, has business elsewhere. It’s missing out on a treat. Scales Moor and Twisleton Scar offer huge blank acres of limestone pavement, as weird and wonderful as anywhere in Yorkshire, that least ordinary of counties.

On a previous visit I’d lost the path in thick mist; this time I was able to enjoy clear daylight. Well, I would have, but that the lingering on the grassy heights meant that night had now fallen on me. A waymark post, lonely in the torchlight, guided me down to the Twisleton Scar track and the bridge over Kingsdale Beck.

Distance: 15 miles/24km Ascent: 2500ft/750m Time: 7–8 hours Start/finish: Kingsdale road opposite Twisleton Scar End. Several small pull-ins. (GR: SD 692760) Map: Ordnance Survey 1:50,000 Landranger sheet 98 (Wensleydale) Information: Ingleton TIC, 01524 241 049 Travel: Bus 581, Ingleton – Settle every two hours; see www.yorkshiretravel.net

Technical Spec
Roadside ladder stile (GR: SD 691759) is signed ‘Turbary Road’. Head up NW to ladder stile, continue NW through limestone scars, then N over Dodson’s Hill to Gragareth. Keep L of wall then fence to Great Coum. Descend E, keeping L of wall, to join Green Lane track. Follow it R to road, turn R 500m, past road top to gate on L. Take faint path E up Whernside. Take ridge down SW, big path then faint one, keeping L of wall. Divert L to Scales Moor, then rejoin path to track below Twisleton Scar End. Turn R across Kingsdale Beck to start.