Words & Photos Ian Battersby

December 01 2010

Simon’s Seat is a rocky platform perched in the heather above Upper Wharfedale. It’s normally tackled via the Valley of Desolation and perhaps The Strid, but I was looking for an alternative when I noticed paths linking it to Trollers Gill and the River Wharfe.

Trollers Gill is one of those mysterious features that crop up without warning in exposed pockets of limestone, where crags teeter over scree slopes that melt into grass like streams dissolving into limestone cavities. The “Gordale of Appletreewick” normally runs dry, with Skyreholme Beck ducking beneath the surface, but heavy rain brings the flood. This could be the least of your worries though. The caves and clefts of Trollers Gill are rumoured to be the home of trolls, boggarts and crazy goblins… but more terrible than these is the Bargest, an immense spectral hound with smouldering eyes, waiting for a weary hiker.

Luckily my passage through the gill went well, and I was soon marching out over the green pastures above the picturesque hamlet of Ap’trick, a forgotten centre for the long abandoned lead mining industry. A herdsman shouted over at me: “mek most of it lad, these cows dunt like wet. Neither d’ lambs. Y’ know what they say about lambs? They need roasting twice: once in t’ sun, and again in t’ oven!” He’d clearly had enough of the recent wet weather.

Eventually the path dropped me by the Wharfe, which flows shallow and wide over oval rocks and beneath the shading branches of bordering trees. I sat down and watched a dipper hunting in the shallows, and realised how well camouflaged they are despite the white bib. Each time it bobbed up for air, a small part of the bib would show for a second, looking just like the ripples that came and went all around it. Further downstream dark pools began to appear, and a few barmy souls were enjoying the early autumn day immersed within them. Soon the woods screened off the river, and I was whisked off to the heather-clad slopes of Barden Fell.

This is access land, and I made off across the heather to Earl Seat, from where I surveyed the various outcrops of gritstone that litter the slopes. There are many of them, and as the sun began to dip I concocted a route that would visit most. First to the low lying outcrops at Truckle Crags, which hid a series of picturesque pools, perhaps only there because of the wet summer we’d had. I crossed through the litter of boulders that make up the Hen Stones, and veered round to the haughty Lord’s Seat, but it was still the lofty outcrop at Simon’s Seat that took my eye, as I sat there, perched over Skyreholmedale, watching the sun take its turn to melt away.

Distance: 10 miles/16km Ascent: 2260ft/670m Time: 6-7 hours Start/finish: Parcevall Hall (GR: SE 068610) Map: Ordnance Survey 1:25,000 Explorer sheet OL2 (Yorkshire Dales Southern & Western areas) Information: Grassington, 01756 752774 Travel: Buses between Ilkley and Grassington vgo via Appletreewick; information from Traveline (0871 200 22 33) or www.prideofthedales.co.uk

Technical Spec
Path N following Skyreholme Beck to Trollers Gill. Continue N through gorge to footbridge (bypass to the W if in flood). Cross beck. Head W to lane. SW down lane to bend then S 100m. Bridleway SW to Woodhouse. Path SE by River Wharfe for two miles to Howgill. Climb zigzags of permissive path through plantation to Flask Brow. E then S to Earl Seat. NNE to Truckle Crags. Track E through Hen Stones. Track NW to Lord’s Seat. Track WSW to Simon’s Seat. Descend N through heather (along vague path) to stile. Path generally WNW to farm track. SW 150m. Path N to High Skyreholme Farm. Lane W then N to return.