Yorkshire Walks

This morning four of us met at the village green in Arncliffe in Littondale (map ref. SD 932718) at about 10.00. We took the path by the church to the riverside and walked downstream for about 3km to Out Gang Lane where we left the river Skirfare and walked the 300m up the lane to the main road along the valley. We turned back up the valley for about 200m to the farm road on our left to Arncliffe Cote. The farm road and the track beyond the farm onto the hills are a permissive path running for about 6km to Street Gate near Malham Tarn. The combination of limestone hills and the heavy Pennine rainfall has sculpted this whole area into an amazing mixture of limestone cliffs, limestone pavements, steep valleys and waterfalls. It's a wonderful place to walk. About 2km from Arncliffe Cote we stopped to look at the waterfall on Cote Gill with a view down Cote Gill back into Littondale itself. We continued to Street Gate where we turned onto the bridleway heading north along the stone farm road towards Middle House Farm. Just before the farm the path goes over a stile to climb the hill. About 0.5km from the stile we took the right hand fork in the path which forms the Monk's Road above Yew Cogar Scar. The path is following the steep sided valley of Cowside Beck back to Arncliffe. The whole route was about 16km and took us about five and a half hours to complete including our refreshment stops.

© 2008 Frank M Firth
Original design by Andreas Viklund