Grim up north

One of the joys of working for yourself is the chance it gives you to play hooky.

Today I was on my way home from an early delivery in Grassington when a break in the clouds sent down a shaft of sunlight with my name on it. I quickly turned the van up a Yorkshire Water track, parked, and set off around Grimwith reservoir.

It was 4.5 miles round, mainly on a track, with just a couple of other dog walkers in the distance and the honk of greylag geese for company. It cleared out a few cobwebs, gave me time to think and best of all nobody knew I was gone.





A hell of a walk

And the day started out so well. We were up before the alarm even pinged, shower, coffee and out at the bus stop before eight. We were headed for a day on Mount Teide, at 3,718m or 12,198ft, the pointy bit in the middle of Tenerife is the highest mountain in Spain.

Mount Teide in the distance

We'd planned the day like a military operation: checked and double checked bus timetables, pre-booked permits to allow us to walk on the rim of the crater, packed fleeces and woolly hats along with the suncream and shorts - what could go wrong?

The first niggle of doubt arose when, in my very schoolgirlish Spanish, I told the driver of the first bus that we were planning to connect with the bus to Las Canadas. I dismissed his stricken look as incomprehension and sat down. Thirty minutes later we were still tootling in and out of the resorts and I began to think it wasn't incomprehension at all, more like "not on your nelly". Eventually though we pulled into the bus station in Playa de las Americas at 9.10. Phew - 5 minutes to spare, now where's the stand for Mt Teide? It was curiously quiet, in fact there was nobody there at all. They were all on the bus that had left at 9 o'clock not 9.15 as the guide book, the 2012 bus map AND the bus company's own website had stated. 

Hey ho now what? A quick regroup and we were back on the bus, this time heading for Adeje, a little town perched above the coast. Ignoring the bars with their beers and their cafe con leches (hard to believe I know) we climbed the steep main street to the start of a popular walk through the Barranco del Infierno, Hell's Gorge.

A large sign greeted us - "Barranco del Infierno sendero cerrado" - footpath closed.  NO! Back down the street to the tourist office where a very patient long-suffering woman explained, clearly for the 42nd time that day, that "Si, barranco cerrado" and "No, not because it's Tuesday, peligro de muerte"
What? - danger of death?

"Si, muerte - falling rocks" she explained but then went on to say that even though the authorities had closed the route we could, if we wanted to, enter the canyon at our own risk. Clearly the Health and Safety mafia have only dipped a toe into Tenerife waters.We tootled back up the street and found that sure enough although the entrance gate was shut and padlocked someone had removed a couple of fence posts and we were easily able to squeeze through.

The walk itself was amazing, a 6.5k round trip to the highest waterfall on the island, something of a trickle after the very dry winter. 

It's a walk of two halves, the path follows the side of an arid ravine...

The start of the walk

A little rest

Getting greener ...

before dropping onto the valley bottom where the vegetation gets greener and lusher...

...and greener...

...and wetter...

...and more overgrown...

until finally we came to the end of the trail...

 

El Cascade!

where we joined the other law breakers for a picnic and a last look up

before agreeing that Mount Teide could wait for another day and heading back to those bars.

A great walk on my own doorstep....

 

 

...and it wasn't even me that walked it!

 

Mike Brockhurst aka the Walking Englshman did this walk on Friday. Tony joined him for the first section but sadly I couldn't go. Gutted - I followed every step of Mike's 1,000 mile walk last summer and would love to meet him.

 

Read Mike's account here.

 

 

Des Res

Did you see Restoration Man this week? Gorgeous George was in Settle with Mark and Pat Rand and their Water Tower. If you missed it you can catch it on 4od and if Victorian station architecture doesn't do it for you there's some fab shots of Pen y ghent and Ribblehead Viaduct.

Thirteenth of February already. I'd better get a post in quick or you'll all be expecting romance and I'm right out of hearts and flowers this year.

The ride2stride festival is still consuming loads of my time. When we first had the idea back in September it was all fun and buzz and what if's. Then the hard graft started and the never again's kicked in. That's all behind us now as we have printed programmes to hold in our hot little hands and a functioning website to add news and views to.

The only thing left to do now is to make sure that people know about it (oh - and pray long and hard to the fair-weather fairy). The publicity machine kicked into action yesterday as 3,500 programmes were sent off to FoSCL (Friends of Settle Carlisle Line) members with their quarterly newsletter. FoSCL have an amazing system for packing newsletters and saving money. Four times a year on a Sunday afternoon a group of volunteers - yesterday there were 30 of us - meet to stuff the envelopes. The addressed envelopes are coded and sorted into post office delivery areas all over the country - Basildon, Burneside, Bognor Regis - and each pile is bagged and labelled. By the time the post office gets the mail half the job of sorting it has been done and they charge accordingly. FoSCL saves thousands of pounds a year thanks to the willing volunteers who do it for the love of FoSCL, the chance for a chat and a slice of cake at half time.

Slip slidin' along

Bloomin' weather forecast! For days the meteorologists had been predicting that Friday would be the best day of the week so despite low cloud we set off early to check out another of the "ones that got away".



Leaving Settle - a grey day

This 9 mile circular from Settle follows ancient trade routes across the moors above Long Preston. It was never going to make the book as the route runs south of Settle and the parameters of Dales Rail Trails are walks between Settle and Kirkby Stephen. It's also outside of the great limestone walking routes of the south western Dales but it's not without interest, offering long distant views and almost guaranteed peace and quiet. We never saw another soul all day. 



We left Settle up an old moor road called Mitchell Lane, which was the main trade route between Settle and Long Preston until the turnpike road (now the busy A65) opened in 1750. Whilst I love walking in open countryside I do get a buzz from following the thousands of feet and cart wheels that have passed before me over the centuries.

There was snow underfoot as we crossed a couple of fields - but this wasn't the deep and crisp and even sort. The snow was light, the ground was sodden and we made a bambi-ish clamber up the only real ascent of the day.



Disguised mud

Back onto a rough track we headed south with great views over Ribblesdale and the Trough of Bowland.

As we neared Long Preston we had a choice - into the village and the Maypole for a liquid lunch or keep going and look for a sheltered spot to eat the butties. The butties won - the pints could wait for the end - and we headed east to start the circular return. We found a perfect lunch spot by a footbridge that crosses Long Preston Beck - a stream that starts life high on Rye Loaf Hill, runs east as Stockdale Beck then plunges over Scaleber Force before continuing south as Scaleber Beck, then Long Preston Beck before finally joining the river Ribble.

A sheltered spot for lunch

More fields brought us to another beck - Bookil Gill Beck which is usually easily crossed on a couple of large stones. Not today - the melt water from the fells had swollen the beck to a torrent and we were forced upstream to look for a crossing point. A fallen fence post provided a precarious tightrope that wobbled ominously - luckily the dog ran ahead to test its safety!



Trudging

By now horizontal snow was creeping into every orifice and we trudged, heads down, along Langber Lane, an ancient drove route that in Elizabethan times linked Settle with Otterburn and Skipton. We took a short detour into Scaleber Woods, where the waterfall of Scaleber Force made a fine sight in full spate, before dropping back down into Settle and that waiting pint.

Scaleber Force

Despite the weather it was a grand walk, not very taxing but (until the white out) with rewarding views in both directions.

The following morning we got up to blazing sunshine which just goes to show the only reliable way to forecast the weather is to open the curtains and peer out.

The ones that got away

The hardest bit about writing a walk book is not what to put in but what to leave out. There are so many ways up the mountain or routes down the valley that sometimes it's hard to know which ones to choose.

Our latest guide book is a collection of walks that can all be done from stations on the Settle-Carlisle line. Walking the fells, selecting the routes and creating the maps took most of last year. Inevitably there were artistic differences - disagreements about what went in and what was left out.

I'm a bit of a fan of a tea shop and any walk that includes the possibilty of a scone gets my vote.

The path to Crummackdale - not far from Elaine's tearoom at Feizor

My co-author likes the open fells, the wilder the better, so long as there's a pint at the finish.



Looking south from Great Knoutberry - only the sheep for company

We got there in the end and Dales Rail Trails is finally ready to face the world - 18 circular, 14 linear walks and one long distance trail through the western Dales. There are easy routes through Ribblesdale and strenuous climbs over Wild Boar Fell, classic ascents of Ingleborough and secluded paths to Crummackdale. Together they give a comprehensive coverage of the area between Settle and Kirkby Stephen. There are loads of routes we left out though so we've decided to put them on the Dales Rail Trails website as Out-takes - the ones that got away!