Fell Head is a mountain in the Howgill Fells. Geographically, it’s part of the county of Cumbria, but falls within the boundaries of the Yorkshire Dales National Park.
From what I’ve seen of the Howgills, I’d describe them as a sort of rolling mass, with the dips between the high points being big enough for them to qualify as separate summits, but often allow walkers to remain quite high, allowing walkers to take in more than one in a walk. This summit can apparently be reached by extending the walk up the Calf, which I’ve previously climbed.
I didn’t do that. I only climbed this one today, going up from the other side.
There are some routes I walk and run very often, and some I’ve never been along, and sometimes these places are right next to each other. This was a walk along a stretch of the River Wharfe which I’ve never explored before, despite walking basically all around this area otherwise.
The walk was between the villages of Burnsall and Appletreewick, and then a bit beyond the latter. I started from Burnsall, which has a little carpark by the river on the side where most of the village is. From there, I went up to and crossed Burnsall Bridge.
On the other side, I continued along the road until I reached a gate on my right which leads into a field that is sometimes used as a carpark. It wasn’t open for that today; it’s mostly a summer thing, when people can park up and spend the day by the river.
But even when it’s not being a carpark, it’s still a field with a footpath going through it. The path is part of the Dales Way, and I would be following the route of that for a lot of the walk.
I turned into the field and walked leftwards across, on what started as a very vague path, but became a built one as it went behind some trees and through a gate.
On the other side, it was a bit muddier, and going between two fences. On my right side were trees on a slope going down to the river, and on the left a big field of sheep and lambs. I saw a lot of lambs on this walk, which made an already nice day even better.
The path brought me down closer to the riverside and eventually over a stile, and onto a wider, worn-in track between two little fenced off fields.
I crossed a bridge, then continued forwards onto Woodhouse Lane. It took me through a property – house on one side of me, other building on the other – then a small field, and a gate by a barn.
Then the lane narrowed into a path which brought me back to the riverside, where it turned left and took me through another gate. Shortly after this, I came across a tree stump that had been made into a little chair, and also become a money tree. It’s not the first money tree chair I’ve seen, but they’re always fun.
I stuck by the riverside for quite some time now. At some parts, the path was right by the water, others it came away a little. I went through gates and under trees, and after a bit came alongside a campsite near the village of Appletreewick.
I like to describe my walks in some detail, but there’s only so much I can do when it’s as straightforward as following a river.
This specific bit of the Wharfe I was actually a little familiar with, since I stayed at the campsite for a couple of nights a few years back. Just after the campsite, a path led up to the road, but I stayed by the river, going up some steps and into a field.
Still sticking by the riverside, I crossed this field, then went up another, pretty big, set of steps. Then it was along the bottom of another field, across a little plank bridge and through another gate, and onwards until I eventually came into a wooded area.
Then it was through there for a while. There was another bridge/gate combo, and a spot where I could get a good look at the river, which was flowing fast and strong on this stretch.
I came out of the woodland through a gate, went through a field and another gate, then under some more trees. I’d come away from the river a bit, and soon reached a road called Stangs Lane, just as it went over a little stream.
This is where I came off the Dales Way; that goes back to the river, while I turned left and walked a bit up the road. I passed a house on my left, then turned right over a stile into a field.
In the field I turned left again and headed in the direction of a hamlet called Skyreholme. I feel I was following some kind of path, though I can’t really see it on my photos. Still, it was a field that bumped and sloped, and I think I walked as levelly as I could through it. I could see a beck – Fir Beck, according to GoogleMaps – well below me.
I passed an old barn on my left, then came alongside a fence on my right, on the other side of which the slope had become earthy and steep enough to count as a drop. Without the fence, someone could probably slip and fall down it.
I continued forwards along the fence, and came into sight of a caravan park ahead of me. I went through a stile onto the road which leads down to it, turned left, and walked up to Skyreholme Lane.
I had considered walking as far as Skyreholme, but rain was starting to threaten, so I decided it would be unwise to continue outwards. And in the end, I did manage to avoid the rain.
I turned left, and quickly came to a junction with two others, where I continued forwards, on Hazler Lane. I passed another junction, this one with Stangs Lane, which I’d come off earlier, and again carried on forwards.
I came into Appletreewick on the main road, and followed it through the village. After the houses end there’s a pub, then another one further along, beside the village stocks. Then the road took me down, past a couple of farms – or possible one with the buildings just spread out – and reached the campsite.
Just before the campsite a path led down to the riverside – I mentioned it earlier in the post – and I went down here and turned right.
Now I was back on the route I’d come out along, and I walked the same way back to Burnsall. Some more lambs had been born in the first field I passed on the way out in the time I’d been gone; their mother was cleaning them as I passed by.
And then I got back to Burnsall, pleased to have seen a different stretch of the River Wharfe to usual.
Photos from the walk are here. Thank you for visiting my blog.
It's high time that we had a chat – Except, no, let me rephrase that; I'll be doing the talking now, You, for once, will sit and listen, It’s well past time I told you how
I'm done with being reasonable, I never owed you anything! I'm so sick of appeasing you, So now we're doing things my way, Or you’ll learn just what I can do.
I wasn’t sure whether to do a post about this walk, because I’ve written about Warrendale Knotts before, and I did go up by the same route, which was in itself an extension of a walk to Victoria Cave I’d written about previously. So it feels like cheating to write about it again.
But last time I went up and down the same way, and this time I made a circular of it, and the extra bit was actually very nice, so I wanted to write about it. So I’ll think of this as more of an update post.
Rivington Pike is a hill in Lancashire. Actually, it appears to be part of another hill called Winter Hill, but it does seem to be classed as a separate summit. It stands over the town of Rivington, and it wasn’t far to the top, but as I’ll get into, I did a lot of meandering.
The name ‘Rivington’ probably comes from Anglo-Saxon words that basically mean ‘farmstead in a rugged place’, but it could also be something to do with rowan trees.
I started from the car park behind the Great House Barn off Rivington Lane. That’s a sixteenth century building which is now a tearoom, and next to it is a visitor centre. The visitor centre was closed when I was there, although the toilets were open.
It’s important for a writer to have a good grasp of the timeline of their story, characters and world; they don’t need to map out each and every detail, but it ought to make sense when the sequence of events are actually laid out, like that sequence of events is actually possible. I think most readers will forgive the odd hiccough, things that actually don’t quite work when you think about them, but as ever, there’s a limit to what they can take.
That limit varies from reader to reader. For me, it’s the point where it feels like the writer isn’t even trying to keep track of things, like they’re just carelessly throwing things out without any regard for whether they actually make sense in relation to each other. Sometimes I’ve found myself doing mental gymnastics trying to work out how maybe something can just about make sense, maybe, but that shouldn’t happen. As a reader, I don’t expect to be spoon fed everything, but I don’t feel like I should be doing mental heavy lifting because the writer didn’t think through basic things.
Loughrigg Fell is a hill in the Lake District. By Lake District standards, it isn’t that big, but for once I didn’t take the shortest route up. Apparently I have done that route a few times, when I was a child – I have distinct memories of some parts and no memories of others.
But this time I climbed from Ambleside, on a route which took me round the hill, with a diversion to the summit. This is a route that can be found online (because this blog really isn’t the place for good directions) and it’s supposed to be 6.5 miles, but I’m quite sure I accidentally added a bit to it.
Smearsett Scar is a small hill near Stainforth in North Yorkshire. It’s another of those walks I did a lot when I was a child, but I think it’s been over a decade since I last went up there.
I started from the carpark in Stainforth, and went the same way I go when I visit Stainforth Force. I left the carpark by a path leading under a road bridge, then to a track where I turned left and crossed the railway, before turning right as the track became a path.
staircaseinthedark 