Yorkshire Walks

Village church at Langcliffe

We started walking at about 10.30am on a walled track leading directly out of the car park. After about 350m we left the walled track and climbed over a stile on the left to follow a path across the fields to the railway, part of the famous Settle to Carlisle line.

The weather forecast for today was good with settled high pressure over the whole area. There was quite a lot of high cloud but no rain at all. Jim and I drove to the little village of Langcliffe about 1.5km north of Settle in the Ribble valley. There is a small car park in the village opposite the church at map ref. SD823650.

Our track meets the Settle to Carlilse railway

Path by the railway - a busy line

Inside the Hoffman Kiln tunnel

Fresh supplies of lime and coal were added ahead of the fire through pipes in the roof and men followed the burnt face to dig out the lime. In this way the fire burnt its way around the oval tunnel constantly replenished and the lime produced continuously removed. It took around six weeks for the fire to burn all the way round the oval and continue on its way. Next to the Craven Lime Works is Murgatroyds lime works. This is much smaller and used less efficient "fill and empty" kilns. They could not compete and went out of business.

We continued alongside the railway for about 500m until we reached the Craven Lime Works. This is a facinating site with a well preserved Hoffman lime kiln. This was the first industrialised continuous method of producing lime. The kiln consists of a tunnel about 3m in diameter and in an oval shape in plan about 150m long. There would have been a mixture of coal and limestone burning in the tunnel.

Approaching the end of the Hoffman Kiln

The side of the Hoffman Kiln

Start of the climb up to Catrigg Force

We followed the road into Stainforth and at map ref. SD822673 we began the climb up to the top of Catrigg Force at map ref. SD831670.

From the lime works we followed the path across the fields to the road at Stainforth, map ref. SD821669.

Sloes in the hedgerow

There is a pedestrian gate here that leads from the track to the top of the falls and then down through the woods to the base of the falls. It's a fine sight cascading down a narrow limestone gorge. We sat on a grassy bank near the top of the falls for our lunch.

Catrigg Force viewed from the top

A large sandstone erratic boulder sat on the limestone

A ewe watching us from above

The mouth of Victoria Cave

From here we followed the path around the foot of the limestone crags to Victoria Cave at map ref. SD838650. We climbed up to the cave and had another short break.

After our break we continued along the track past Upper Winskill and out to the road at map ref. SD834659. Here on our left there is the Winskill Stones Nature Reserve.

Looking back to Ingleborough on the horizon

The summit of Pen-y-ghent about 7km to the north

Looking NW from Victoria Cave

Jim goes to investigate another cave

Here we followed the path round to our right with spectacular limestone crags up to our right.

The we continued following the path along the foot of the crags to Attermire Scar.

Leaving the limestone crags behind

The last field back into Langcliffe

The whole route had been 10km and it had taken us over four hours to walk including our stops, exploration of the Hoffman Kiln and visits to Catrigg Force and Victoria Cave. It had been a very interesting walk. We called in Settle for a coffee and a bacon roll before heading home, all in all an excellent day.

We continued along the path down a steep descent to join a path at map ref. SD823641 coming out of Settle and heading for Langcliffe. We followed this path for about a kilometer back to the car park in Langcliffe.

The last field back into Langcliffe