Warrendale Knotts

Above Settle.

The weekend before Christmas, when we would, in normal circumstances, be gathered together for a wet weekend of overeating, anecdote bingo, and maybe a bit of walking. Obviously that couldn’t happen last year. At least we could meet up for a walk. Sadly, the Surfnslide crew were self-isolating and weren’t able to join us.

Rainbow over Settle. Glad I got that sheet of corrugated iron in the foreground!

We met in Settle with a view to climb Warrendale Knotts. I suggested we divert slightly from our planned itinerary to take a look at Scaleber Force…

Scaleber Force.

I’d noticed that a small section of woodland here is access land, and that a right-of-way drops down to the bottom of the falls and then abruptly stops.

The EWO and Scaleber Force.

I think you’ll agree, it was worth a little out-and-back along a minor lane to see it. We found a likely spot, out of the wind, for an early lunch spot, thinking shelter might be at a premium later in the walk. Naturally, once we’d settled down, it began to rain. This seems to have been a recurring theme when we’ve met for walks of late.

Pendle Hill. Plus more corrugated iron.

High Hill Lane – that’s High Hill straight ahead.

It brightened up and we had a lovely sunny spell back along High Hill Lane.

But it was soon grey and wet again. It was that sort of day.

Warrendale Knotts.

The route we took up Warrendale Knotts proved to be ridiculously steep near the top, but it was well worth the effort…

Attermire Scar from Warrendale Knotts. The distant big hole in the middle of the picture is Victoria Cave.

On Warrendale Knotts.

We spent quite some time on this modest top. It was very windy, but with the clouds scudding across the views were constantly changing and very dramatic.

Crepuscular Rays.

Warrendale Knotts and Attermire Scar. Rye Loaf Hill on the right.

Pen-y-ghent

Pen-y-ghent and one of the cairns on Warrendale Knotts. Is that Fountains Fell in the cloud on the right?

Leaving the top.

Eventually, we had to move on. In fact, the Cheshire contingent had some pressing engagement and we chose to walk with them, initially at least, and so by-passed Victoria Cave.

Another view of Pen-y-ghent.

The weather deteriorated again, but the Adopted Yorkshire Woman assured us that she remembered a shelter, or possibly a cave, in the vicinity of Jubilee Cave, which would be kitted out with comfortable benches and provide a pleasant dry spot for another lunch stop. Sadly, it never materialised. Hard words may have been spoken about the vividness of the AYW’s imagination.

Jubilee Cave.

AT Jubilee Cave, the Cheshire crew left us to take a direct route back to Settle, whilst the remainder of our small party returned to Settle via Winskill and Langcliffe. That’s a very pleasant route, but I didn’t take any more photos, because the rain returned and this time it meant business. We did enjoy a brief dry spell and had a hurried stop in order to drain the dregs from our flasks, but by the time we reached the cars it was chucking it down. A small price to pay for a terrific walk though.

The day before this walk I uninstalled and reinstalled MapMyWalk. It worked, so here’s the resultant map. I think the numbers are kilometres, although the 4 and 6 seem a bit odd?

Warrendale Knotts, not named on the OS 1:50,000 is the trig pillar with a psot height of 440m.

I’ve never climbed Warrendale Knotts before, and I still haven’t been up Rye Loaf Hill. Looking at the map of the Dales, it also occurs to me that I haven’t been up Great Shunner Fell or Buckden Pike or Fountains Fell since the mid-eighties. Which seems criminal given that they’re all relatively close to home. Aside from the Three Peaks area, the closest bit to home, I’ve been neglecting the Dales. I have a lot of exploring to do!

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Back to Camping Maisonneuve

Looking down on the campsite – our tents are in the trees, right of the buildings.

Long-suffering readers of this blog may remember that in 2018 we holidayed in the Dordogne and Tarn valleys in France with some old friends. This summer, we repeated the trip. Once again, the whole thing was meticulously planned and booked by The Shandy Sherpa, whose attention to detail is staggering. For example: scoping all of the Aires on the drive down, in advance, using Google Maps to see whether they had large enough parking spaces for cars towing trailer-tents. As they say, the devil is in the detail, and Andy’s careful planning ensured that the whole trip went smoothly in potentially trying circumstances. Awesome.

Castelnaud-la-Chapelle

This trip is a very laidback affair with certain key elements – a morning walk to the bakers; plenty of reading; meals together, often revolving around a barbecue; games of Kubb and Mölkky, usually continuing when darkness made accurate throwing next to impossible; lots of swimming, canoeing and floating down the river on inflatable rings; and short, steep walks up to the limestone cliffs above the campsite.

Castelnaud-la-Chapelle seen from hills above the Céou valley.

TBH in a cave mouth.

‘Little’ S finds a ‘window’.

TBF had a potentially nasty fall in one of the caves, but, sensibly, used Little S to break her fall. Fortunately, neither were hurt badly, just somewhat shaken.

We’d brought three different hammocks with us, which all got a lot of use. They all belong to TBH, presents I’ve bought her over the years. Why does she need three? Because that way, there’s at least a chance that the kids will leave her in peace in one of them, whilst they argue over the remaining two. We probably need another one!

Upstream of the campsite, there’s an excellent swimming hole; downstream there’s a bridge over another deep spot – perfect for jumping in. Trips, with or without inflatables, between either of those pools and the one by the campsite were a significant feature of the trip. Of course, we could and did do the whole trip from the upstream pool to the downstream bridge, but the Céou is surprisingly cold, so that trip was a bit long for comfort.

GR64, one of the amazing network of long-distance paths in France, passes close to the campsite. On a couple of occasions when the others were floating downstream, I took off for an out and back wander along the route. It was pleasant woodland walking, with occasional tantalising views of the Dordogne valley…

Les Jardins de Marqueyssac

TBH and I visited the gardens on our last visit.

Château de Beynac

Chateau de Bonaguil

We did occasionally stray a little further afield, including a trip out to this magnificent castle. It had drawbridges, towers, winding staircases, caves below, lizards on the walls and even a bat hanging from the ceiling in one of the rooms.

I didn’t see the montgolfières as often this trip as I did last time, but I did frequently hear them flying overhead early in the mornings whilst I was still tucked up in bed. This photo shows the beginning of an afternoon flight which was very dramatic since the balloons flew very low and continually flirted with a collision with a tree, without ever quite hitting one.

Pain au Noix et Pain de Campagne.

Gearstones Get-together.

Gayle Beck, which becomes the River Ribble. Or the River Ribble which has been Gayle Beck.

A distant view of Ribblehead Viaduct

Calf Holes

Ling Gill

The viaduct again.

Ingleborough

Force Gill

These photos are from our pre-Christmas weekend at Gearstones Lodge near Ribblehead. You’ll perhaps have spotted that people are noticeable by their absence – even though the photos come from two sociable walks in largish parties, and the principal pleasure of the weekend is in the catching-up with old friends, general chit-chat and light-hearted banter. It seems I have reverted to type and lived up to my kids image of me as a curmudgeonly misanthrope. My excuse is that I didn’t take any photos of my friends precisely because I was too busy chin-wagging.

The two walks were, firstly, a wander around the area to the south of the lodge, which is packed with interesting features like pot-holes, caves, waterfalls and a steep-sided ravine; and, secondly, a cloudy and eventually wet outing on Whernside.

Andy has a much better account of the weekend here.

One curiosity which he omitted to mention, I think: as we finished out first day’s walking, descending the track which is an old Roman road back towards Gearstones, we were passed by a steady stream of vehicles, which is a bit of a surprise on a rough track. We surmised that the occupants had been shooting on the moors.

It was, as ever, a fantastic weekend. We planned to all get together again, as usual, for the May Bank Holiday weekend, which seems very unlikely now. Here’s hoping we don’t have to wait too long before we can see each other again and I can once again take lots of landscape photos and apparently ignore my companions.

Half-term Happenings: Back to Little Salkeld

Addingham Church.

We were all keen to get out for a family walk, none more so than my dad, but he struggles with the cold these days and I wanted to find a route which had both the potential for a good walk, but also the option to cut the walk short if need be. After a bit of deliberation, I hit upon the idea of two shorter walks based around Little Salkeld in the Eden valley. We parked initially by Addingham Church near the village of Glassonby (curiously, the village of Addingham no longer exists).

This walk, or variations on it, have become a firm favourite of ours. Here’s A beside the Saxon Cross in the churchyard…

And here she is posing for a similar photo back in 2011….

In the intervening years the cross seems to have shrunk!

I can rarely resist the temptation to have a peek inside any churches I pass and Addingham certainly repays the effort. The lady on the right here is St. Cecilia, an early Christian martyr. I thought that the instrument she’s shown playing seemed entirely unlikely, but apparently she is often depicted playing it and it’s a real instrument – a portative organ or organetto. My lazy internet research also revealed that St. Cecilia appeared on the reverse of the old Edward Elgar £20 note.

There she is bottom left, beneath Worcester Cathedral. Presumably because she is the patron saint of musician’s. I can’t say that I’ve ever realised that she was there. How many times I have handled notes like this one, over the years, without ever really looking at them?

Then again, I didn’t know that King David is traditionally associated with the harp either, a fact which appears in the Book of Samuel, just before the more familiar story of David and Goliath.

Talking of familiar stories, here’s Saint George and the unfortunate dragon in my favourite window at Addingham.

Addingham also has two hogback gravestones, which, I’ve learned, were unique to the Viking settlers in Britain and haven’t been found in Scandinavia. The best preserved example is at St. Peters in Heysham, which I’ve walked past many times, but never been inside – an omission I must rectify soon.

It’s a short downhill stroll from Addingham Church to the huge stone circle of Long Meg and her Daughters.

I didn’t take many photos on this occasion, just these of my mum and Dad and my brother, but the stones have appeared on the blog many times before.

Winter Aconites on a roadside verge.

Another short stroll brings you to Little Salkeld, where we enjoyed a fabulous lunch in the cafe at the Watermill….

Steve and I then walked briskly back up to collect the cars and park them in Little Salkeld, whilst the rest set-off for a wander along the River Eden to Lacy’s Caves…

We managed to catch them up at the caves themselves.

By the time we had turned to walk back to Little Salkeld, an already cold day had become even colder, but that didn’t detract from a marvellous family outing.

Pre-Xmas Weekend: Ling Gill and Calf Holes.

Ling Gill.

The forecast for the Sunday was, if anything, even worse than it had been for the day before. However, some of us were itching to get out, and so, when TBH revealed that she had left her trekking poles behind whilst out on a walk the day before, we decided to go out to look for them. We started by heading up onto the moors of Cam End then turned south on the Pennine Way, heading for the impressive gorge of Ling Gill.

We met a lady walking her dog who told us that she walks that path every day and that we were the first people she had met for months. It’s a very quiet corner of the world!

Looking across Ling Gill to Ingleborough.

Calf Holes.

At Calf Holes a stream disappears into a yawning pothole.

TBH had been here with the boys the day before and this was where she thought she had left her poles. There was no sign of them, but it later transpired that some of our friends had picked them up here later in the day, so she will eventually get them back.

TBH wasn’t overly concerned about her poles and, whilst Andy and I faffed about taking photos, took the opportunity to tuck in to her pack-up.

Brow Gill Beck

The stream which pours into Calf Holes emerges downstream at Brow Gill Cave and then flows briefly underground again at God’s Bridge.

God’s Bridge.

We’d been this same way on our previous outing, but that had been in the dark, this time we managed to get back to the lodge almost before it got completely dark. In the end, the weather had been much kinder than we had been led to expect with hardly any rain and not too much wind – it had been a good decision to get out.

The next day, when we were packing up and leaving, the sky was pure blue, the sun shone and we were too busy to take advantage of it. Not to worry, it had been a highly enjoyable weekend, as always and a great start to our yuletide celebrations.

Pre-Xmas Weekend: Pen-y-ghent

As ever, we got together with a gaggle of old friends for the weekend before Christmas. After several years at Chapel-le-Dale, this year we moved, but only a little way up the road to Gearstones Lodge. Here’s the lodge…

I’ll take a moment to say that, if you are after simple, comfortable and spacious accommodation in a fantastic location for a largish group at a good price, then this place is going to be very hard to beat.

The first time we booked accommodation for a weekend before Christmas, A was just a baby and spent most of the weekend happily rocking furiously or sleeping in the only warm room at Slaidburn hostel. Now here she is, in the first photo, practically all grown up. It’s not the best photo of either A or Pen-y-ghent, which is hidden in the cloud behind,  but I’ve included because it’s a very typical A pose: she doesn’t want me to take her photo, but is tolerating my antics with a bemused look which tells me just how little she appreciates it.

Here she is again. We were all hunkered down behind the wall seeking some shelter from the wind and rain. We’d parked in Horton-in-Ribblesdale and were climbing Pen-y-ghent with the intention of continuing back to Gearstones afterwards.

A and J.

As often happens, somebody had stopped to change a layer or swig some water and somebody else had taken that as a queue for a lunch stop. We have a lot of lunch stops when walking together. I think there may even have been more scoffing underway when I caught up with the rest of the party at the top of Pen-y-ghent, having lagged behind a little, as is my wont. Certainly, an ‘official’ lunch stop was declared in the sheltered hollow…

Around the opening of Hunt Pot.

From there we diverted slightly from the most direct route to take a look at the highly impressive Hull Pot…

Usually, the streambed above the pot is dry, but one compensation of the weather being so wet was the opportunity it afforded to see the falls cascading over the edge of the pot.

And that’s it for my photos of that day. We still had quite a long way to walk, but it was very overcast at first, then dark for the last hour or so and anyway, I was busy chinwagging.

The ground we covered from Pen-y-ghent back to Gearstones did look very interesting, when we could still see it, and I look forward to going back to have another look in more conducive conditions.

Andy has helpfully included a map of our route in his post and there are more photos too.

And for photos from Pen-y-ghent in better weather, here are two previous posts of my own: here and here.

Back at the hostel, we dried out over cups of tea then enjoyed some top-notch grub and no doubt lots of silly anecdotes.

I’ve finished a number of walks in the dark this winter, which is just how winter walks should finish, and which gives me a handy excuse to include this…

‘It Might Get Dark’ by White Denim, which has something of Marc Bolan about it. I’ve heard White Denim quite a bit since I started listening to Radio 6. They’re touring the UK in February…..

Lacy’s Caves and Long Meg

A Saturday afternoon and we decided to dragoon the boys into coming out for a walk with us. In honesty, I can’t remember how we arrived at the decision to repeat a walk along the River Eden, taking in Little Salkeld Watermill, Lacy’s Caves and the Long Meg and her Daughters stone circle, but it was a good choice.

We began with lunch in the cafe at the mill, which was delicious, then set off towards the river. There was a paper notice tacked to the signpost indicating that some part of the footpath had been damaged by flooding and then closed, but the notice looked quite old, so we decided to ignore it.

TBH and I have done this walk three times now, and each time we’ve seen lots of Buzzards in this first part of the walk. Closer to hand, there were flowers and insects to admire and a tree heavily laden with rather tart apples.

Small White Butterfly on some sort of Hawk’s-beard, possibly Rough Hawk’s-beard.

Tachina Fera.

Forest Bug.

More fungi.

Earthballs.

A weir on the Eden. Force Mill opposite.

We did eventually see some signs of flood damage, but that had nothing to do with what happened next. I’m not sure how, but I lost my footing and fell down the steep bank towards the river. Little S was first to react, grabbing hold of my ankle as I slid down the slope, which, frankly, could have ended badly for him,  but between us we managed to halt my fall. I was a bit bruised and grazed, my camera took a whack, and I think we were all  slightly shaken, but ultimately, no harm was done.

The view of the River Eden from Lacy’s Caves.

Lacy’s Caves.

These are not natural caves, but were hewn from the rock by order of the local landowner Colonel Samuel Lacy. There are several connected ‘rooms’. One of them still has some planks in it and some metal brackets fastened to the wall, as if there had been a bench or a bed here. Apparently, Lacy may have paid someone to live in the caves as a ‘hermit’, which was a fashionable thing to do for a time. There are more pictures of the caves here, from our last family visit, made at a time when Little S genuinely was still little.

The boys may be practically grown up now, but they weren’t above a game of hide and seek in the caves, which, I’ll admit, was pretty hilarious.

I remember these wooden posts from last time too. This is one from a series erected around the Eden Valley area and designed by artist Pip Hall. They’re textured so that rubbings can be taken.

Mixed flock of Jackdaws and Rooks.

More fungi.

One of Long Meg’s daughters.

More daughters with Cross Fell in the cloud and the radar station on Great Dun Fell behind.

The uncountable daughters.

The Long Meg stone circle is amazing and, on the evidence of three visits, almost guaranteed to be virtually deserted.

Long Meg.

And again.

There’s some more detail and folklore regarding the stone circle in my previous post about a visit, here.

We first learned about this route from a leaflet published by Discover Eden. It was available as a PDF online, but these days you have to buy it. One word of warning – the leaflet gives a longer version of this walk, including a visit to Addingham Church, as 4½ miles, but my phone app gave 6 miles for our truncated version. No wonder our original round took us 6 hours when we had a toddler with us.

La Grotte de Dargilan

The purpose of our journey to the Jonte valley was to visit a show cave, la Grotte de Dargilan. Both the Dordogne and the Cévennes, being limestone regions, are dotted with caves, including many show caves. In fact, we’d driven almost directly past another show cave to get to this one, having decided that, from the leaflets we’d seen, this one looked the better bet. We lunched on a sunny terrace with a great view of the gorge and then joined our group to pass through an unprepossessing doorway in the hillside.

The cave was discovered, I think, by someone following a fox. Similar stories are told about Victoria Cave in the Dales and the famous Lascaux cave in the Dordogne. The huntsman will certainly have had a surprise when they found themselves in a vast cavern, stuffed full of amazing stalagmites, stalactites and flowstone features.

As a boy, family visits to show caves in the Peak District were a favourite treat of mine. I’ve since done a little bit of caving and have also visited most, I think, of the show caves in the Dales, but I’ve never seen anything half as spectacular as this.

There was so much to see that features which might have been considered highlights elsewhere were passed without comment by the guide.

I took no end of photos, but, in the strongly contrasting light, the results were a bit hit and miss. I’m glad to have the mementoes, however.

The huge scale, variety and sheer number of features was breath-taking.

The tour took over an hour, and in truth I would have appreciated a little longer to take it all in.

Mostly the tour guide spoke only in French and we were happy to ignore him and just look about us, but at one point he switched to English to explain that we would now be descending to ‘the best part’ of the cave. I was a bit sceptical about the claim that things could be any more impressive.

But he was absolutely right.

We came to a long, high and relatively narrow passage where one wall was completely covered in tiers and tiers of flowstone.

It was huge.

And absolutely astonishing.

Dargilan is known, apparently, for it’s coloured limestones. Minerals in the flowstone have dyed the rock in a variety of pinks, corals, yellows, white and cream. Here…

…the dividing line between two different colours was amazingly sharp.

The cave had one final surprise, a column, 17 metres tall I think, again covered with intricate flowstone features…

I think most of the party enjoyed it immensely. B claimed to be underwhelmed:

“It’s just rocks though, isn’t it?”

But he’s a wind-up merchant and you have to take the things he says with a pinch of salt.

Cliffs and Caves above the Céou

The Dordogne region, at least the area we visited, is characterised by low, wooded hills (only just creeping above 200m above sea level) cut by steep-sided valleys, often with limestone cliffs and edges. The slopes above Maisonneuve were topped with cliffs and Andy had been told by his Dutch neighbours (based on our limited survey, all European campsites seem to be mostly populated by the Dutch) that a path led from the campsite up to the base of those cliffs and that there were caves to explore in the cliffs. Indeed, we could see one large cave opening high in the cliffs above.

Looking down the valley to Castelnaud-la-Chapelle and its Chateau.

It was a steep, sweaty (for me anyway) climb up through the trees, but well worth it when it brought us to the honeycombed, honey-coloured rocks.

There were small caves immediately…

Irresistible to the DBs…

Of course, when you climb up to a cave you then have to get back down again; B found getting down from this one much more difficult than getting up had been and I found myself guiding his feet down into suitable footholds.

There were long lines of ants spreading across the cliffs.

Turning along the base of the cliffs we soon came across a larger cave…

…with several entrances…

…and evidence of former occupation…

I think it’s fair to say that there’s a long history of cave occupation in the area – the famous Lascaux caves with their paintings are in the Dordogne after all.

Of course the DBs found a tight little passage to crawl through…

I preferred to be outside watching a lizard expertly negotiating the rock walls…

I think that this is a Common Wall Lizard, rather than the Common Lizards we see at home, but I’m not confident about that at all.

We continued along the base of the cliffs, coming across more cave openings, this one…

…being the largest.

The path continued…

…but we were feeling ready for a swim, so turned back.

Our young friend E though had other ideas, she wanted to follow the path in the other direction up to the top of the crags to see the view. Her mum J…

…and TBH and I decided to join us. Others may have too, but the message didn’t get to all of the party. The climb was mercifully short…

And the views, when we got to them, were well worth the modest effort…

The Céou Valley

Camping Maisonneuve.

There were a couple of Hummingbird Hawkmoths flying around near the top of the cliffs, which excited me greatly since they are rare visitors to Britain. I didn’t manage to photograph them this time, but would have many more opportunities.

Céou Valley Panorama.

Castelnaud and its Chateau didn’t exactly dominate the view…

…but they certainly stood out…

…especially the Chateau…

Finally, back down through the woods for a well-earned swim.

No Jokers on Ingleborough

Pen-y-Ghent in a winter suit.

I felt like I was holding all the aces. It was the day before my birthday, the sky was completely cloudless and the hills had a new dusting of snow. What’s more, I was driving along the A65 with an appointment with Ingleborough. The only thing I hadn’t decided was quite which route I would follow. I’d been perusing the map and some favourite websites the night before to try to make a decision. I hoped to find Purple Saxifrage flowering as we did last year on Pen-y-ghent. Now, Saxifraga Oppositifolia is rare in England, but I’d found several references to the fact that it grows on Ingleborough as well as Pen-y-ghent, not least in John Self’s online book ‘The Wildlife of the Lune Region’ which suggests that an exploration of the steep and fractured cliffs of the western face would be the best place to look. I also found an enthralling description of a route which would fit the bill perfectly.

But now that I could see those western slopes through my windscreen, I knew that they were in a deep shade and seemed likely to be so for some time to come. Knowing that I had to play the hand I’d been dealt, I decided to start my ascent from Clapham instead.

The first trick of the day was to find the right path out of the village and then a steepish pull brought me to Long Lane…

Long Lane. The edge on the right is Robin Proctor’s Scar which I photographed last year during a walk from Austwick.

Long Lane climbed slowly but steadily and, although it was cold, it was wonderful to be out in the sunshine.

Long Lane again.

I generally try to climb a hill on my birthday, but over the years I’ve learned to be flexible when work or other commitments have not allowed me to. This year I chose to take my birthday walk a day early, simply because the weather forecast was much better for that day.

Rayside Plantation and Ingleborough Cave.

Trow Gill.

Pretty soon I’d reached the snow. At home we’d had rain the night before, but here it had fallen as a snow.

Ingleborough and Simon Fell.

We see Ingleborough from Eaves Wood and on our daily drive in to Lancaster, and it has a very distinctive profile, so the view from the south-east was oddly unfamiliar.

Pen-y-ghent.

Looking back towards Norber. Distant Pendle Hill on the left-hand skyline.

From the area around Long Scar I’d turned left on a marvellous green lane which made the going very easy. Even through areas of limestone pavement…

Ingleborough and Simon Fell.

Pen-y-ghent.

The breeze was only gentle, but still chilling, so I was pleased, after passing through the gate into the large field called The Allotment, to find a small hollow by a stream which afforded some shelter.

It was a real suntrap! Everything was coming up trumps. I parked myself beside the beck: time to get a brew on.

A prospect to warm the hearts ♥.

I felt quite warm and cosy sunbathing here, although there was plenty of evidence that I was kidding myself a little:

Ice diamonds? ♦

I’d been listening to Meadow Pippits serenading the sun and I think I saw a couple of Wheatears, although I couldn’t be sure. It was great to hear some birdsong after the cold spring we’ve endured.

I sat for around half an hour in the sun, but then it was time to get going again. After the very gentle climbing I’d been doing, the next section was a little steeper, but brought the compensation of even better views.

Pen-y-ghent and Ribblesdale.

Soon I’d reached the top edge of the great bowl between Simon Fell and Ingleborough.

And then I was on the ridge itself, with new views to take in.

Whernside and the valley of the River Doe. (Doedale?)

The western edge of Simon Fell and Souther Scales Fell.

Black shiver? The fissured boulder on the left is so distinctively gritstone that it had me thinking of all the rock features of the Dark Peak which still seem so familiar even though it’s many years since I visited any of them.

Black Shiver from the other direction. I think.

The broad plateau of the top of Ingleborough was busy with walkers eating their sandwiches. I walked around the edges, thinking I could find some sort of shelter, but it seemed to be impossible to get out of the icy wind. Even the four way shelter at the very top didn’t seem to offer much protection, so I decided not to join the clubs ♣.

So I carried on, dropping down towards the prominent notch which is where, at some time in the past, a landslip has dropped down the slopes (hence Falls Foot on the lower slopes).

My descent took me past a layer of broken limestone crags…

Which is what I was looking for. So I began clambering around beneath those, in search of the, initially elusive, Purple Saxifrage.

I spotted these prominent plant stalks in a cliff…

They were much too large to be saxifrage, but intriguing none-the-less. I shall have to return later in the year to see if I can discover what this is.

Eventually I found what I was looking for…

…but the flowers weren’t quite open. Or not many of them were…

I’d read that the flowers are purple when they first open, then gradually turn pink. There’s quite a contrast in fact, with the flowers we saw last year:

Further exploration brought me to a dramatic spot…

…where, with snow on steep ground, a limestone cliff above and another cliff, of a different rock, below, I decided that discretion was required and turned back.

Panorama of Whernside. Click to see larger version.

Whernside and the extensive limestone pavements of Raven Scar and Twisleton Scar, part of the Great Scar Limestone.

Gritstone rockfall below limestone crags. To say that the geology of this area is complex is a massive understatement.

The Yoredale Series are layers of sedimentary rocks – limestones, sandstones, shales and a cap of gritstone – which characterise the Yorkshire Dales. In the photo above you can see two sets of crags, the lower limestone, the higher gritstone with gritstone boulders below the limestone.

The crags at the top of The Falls. In shade still.

And, on the other side of the gully, free of snow.

Icicles, in spades. ♠

Still quite cold, then!

Just along the edge from the Falls there are two heaps of stones…

…that looked likely to be the remains of some sort of manmade structures. There’s a long history of Ingleborough being occupied, with an Iron Age hill-fort and hut circles and, even more improbably, a very short-lived Hospice Tower built in 1830, the base of which can still be seen on the summit. What age or purpose these small rocky piles might have had, I don’t know, but it’s interesting to speculate.

I climbed part of the way back towards the summit, detouring once again to check out a couple more limestone crags and find some more saxifrage.

One short climb brought me to the Limestone Load, a level shelf between the two sets of crags which had gritstone features on the surface, but also a long line of dolines…

Some of which had obvious limestone features…

I was heading for Little Ingleborough…

Looking back to the summit.

Little Ingleborough.

On the descent from Little Ingleborough I finally found somewhere sufficiently sheltered to make me feel inclined to stop for another brew and a late lunch.

Gaping Gill – Fell Beck falls 98m into the largest underground chamber in England which is naturally open to the surface.

Gaping Gill pano.

Bar Pot, another entrance to the Gaping Gill system. An exit too: whilst I was taking the photo some scraping sounds augured the emergence of a lone caver.

Trow Gill.

The path descends through Trow Gill, apparently formed by a meltwater torrent at the end of the last ice age.

Foxholes a cave where human and animal remains have been found.

Clapham Beck Head where the water from Gaping Gill finally resurges.

Clapham Beck is one of the sources of the River Wenning and so is another tributary of the Lune, so that this walk is another instalment of my exploration of the Lune catchment area.

Ingleborough Cave. I haven’t been in there for years, but it’s well worth a visit. Must take the kids.

Clapham Beck.

Since I dropped into the shelter of Trow Gill it had been feeling much warmer, so in Clapdale Wood I stopped for one final cup of tea.

The Lake. Imaginatively named, don’t you think? And – it’s a reservoir.

Clapham Beck.

Scenes from Clapham…

Market Cross.

In ‘Walks in Limestone Country’, Wainwright wrote:

Of the many walks described in this book, the ascent of Ingleborough from Clapham is pre-eminent, the finest of all, a classic. A lovely village….charming woodlands……..an enchanting valley……natural wonders………a climb to a grand mountain-top. Oh yes, this is the best.

I can’t help feeling that in amending my plan for the day I made a good choice. You might say that I played my cards right. Or that I was dealing from a full-deck.

What’s that? Which birthday was it? Haven’t you worked that out yet? Just to clear-up any ambiguity: I didn’t come across any humorous types on Ingleborough. No jokers, you might say. Which leaves?

My mapping app gives 13½ miles and just over 2000′ of climbing. Not a bad little outing.