frank'sYORKSHIRE WALKS
My Walking Diary
These Diary pages are just a few notes and pictures of the routes I walk. I hope that they give you some ideas for walks of your own and if you need more details of a particular route you can use the route request form to contact me
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30
July 2003
|
The
weather forecast for today predicted heavy showers getting fewer
from the west during the morning and better bright sunny spells
in the afternoon. This was the best we could pick out for a walk
this week, so we decided to drive west to map ref. SE 037553 on
the road from Barden Bridge to Embsay. At about 10am we set off
along the bridleway over Embsay Moor overlooking the huge bowl
of moorland that includes Upper and Lower Barden reservoirs. Looking
across the Lower Barden reservoir to the hills on the far side
of Wharfedale above Grassington, the sky was very threatening.
We had been walking for about 20 minutes when the rain we had
been watching approach finally hit us. It lasted for almost half
an hour as we plodded over the moor, but when it stopped the cloud
was much more broken and the sunny spells were quite hot. We
continued on the bridleway along a grouse shooters' track for
about 6km. to map ref. SD 983571 at the wall along the craggy
edge of the moor overlooking Rylstone and Cracoe. We turned right
here to follow the wall along the edge. The whole moor except
for the reservoirs is all open access land here. There is no path
marked on the map along the wall side but there is a good well
walked path on the ground. We followed the path beside the wall
for about 600m climbing all the time to Rylstone Cross where we
stopped for a break to admire the view. The dramatic sky just
added to the am,azing spectacle. There was Pendle Hill in the
distance to the south west, the top of Ingleborough visible to
the north west, and a peep into 
Wharfedale
to the north east. By now the weather was fine and we had no more
trouble with rain, in fact it was a wonderful day for walking
with dramatic skies and warm sunny intervals. After our break
we continued along the edge to Cracoe Monument, a stone obilisk
war memorial at map ref. SD 993588. We climbed the ladder stile
over the wall to go see the view from the rocky mound where the
obilisk stands. It was superb! We met a couple at the stile who
were walking a similar route to us but the other way round. They
were the only other people wet met all day. We left the obilisk
and continued along the path beside the wall for about 1.2km by
this point the path had become a stoney track and the wall fell
away to our left. we continued on the track for another 1.5km
to map ref. SE 
015599
where there is a substantial stone shooting hut (more a solid
stone house really). About 400m beyond the shooting hut the track
forks and we took the right fork to map ref. SE 024595 where we
turned right down a pleasant green track for about 100m to a small
reservoir at map ref. SE 024594. We continued along the green
track passed the reservoir for about 2.3km to the dam at Upper
Barden reservoir. We took the permissive path across the crest
of the dam to map ref. SE 013575. From here we turned left on
to a track across the moor to map ref. SE 022563 on the bridleway
we had started out along. At the bridleway we retraced our steps
for about 1.8km back to the car. the whole route was about 18.5km
and took us five and a half hour to walk including our stops.
On the way back we stopped at the Strid car park and had a coffee
at one of the picnic tables before heading for home. 
