Well, we did it! As I write this on July 7th, we have completed our journey and walked more than 81 miles of the Dales Way from Ilkley to Bowness - on -Windemere, in sunshine & rain, on the boggy almost-turf covered high windswept hills & alongside bubbling streams and rivers, passing through remote Yorkshire & Cumbria country towns that look as if they haven't left the 19th century. We walked through pastures of sheep with their new-born lambs (and dodged more forms of sheep poo than I knew existed), past big herds of impressively large dairy cows plus a few horses. We sometimes followed the path of the English Age of Steam and stood next to four massive stone railway viaducts that once carried the products of the area to Liverpool and the markets of the world. We did it in 7 days of walking, in an officially Augmented Team Turtle, as we have incorporated our dear friend and fellow Camino devotee Elaine Hopkins into the Team as an integral component. We cursed at missing or confusing trail markers & misleading maps, ate well at British pubs and fancy restaurants, walked as much as 15 miles a day and in general, had a wonderful time!
But what we couldn't do was post do our nightly blogs on this site because - simply put - we were in a Internet blackout zone most of the way and where we did have access, it was painfully slow. I almost expected to hear the yowling screech of the old days on a dial-up 9.2 modem! Blogging was impossible but we all managed to add a few Facebook posts as we went, so parts of this may seem a little redundant to some of you. But stay with us - we'll try to bring up some new thoughts and observations about walking in the North of England, in this, our third year of when we celebrate America's Independence Day while we're in England!
But let's push the Wabac button and - whir, poof - we're back on June 23rd and we're just gotten off a Ryanair flight from Shannon airport in Ireland over the Irish Sea to Manchester in England. Thanks to great transportation planning, the train terminal is only a 10 minute walk (all indoors) built as part of the big Manchester airport complex. I bought my tickets online for the Pennine Express train to the Dales Way starting point in Ilkley; we have to change trains in Leeds (I'm surprised to learn that Leeds is the second largest railway station in England) so we found our way over to the far end of the terminal and got on a local train for the next 20 of so miles to Ilkley. It was a short walk to our inn for the night and we checked in at the bar for our room at the Dalesway Hotel. Our trans-Atlantic flight jet lag is over now, thanks to the prior four wonderful days we've spent in Ireland and today in Ilkley is clear and partly sunny. After a quick breakfast, we headed across the street and into the big town park next to the River Wharfe. We will be following this river system upstream for miles as we walk north. We are in high latitudes and since its only a few days since the summer solstice, the sun rose at 4:30 in the morning and will set about 10:30 at night.
The first five or six miles of our planned 14 mile walk today is flat and next to the river. We pass through wooded outlying residential areas and then long stretches where it seems to be only us on the trail. Soon we cross the boundary of the Yorkshire Dales National Park and our way becomes a little more complicated, since the signage we'd been following - a signpost marked "Dales Way Footpath" or else a round yellow sticker pasted on a fence-post or stile with an bold arrow and words indicating it's for Dales Way - seem to change into more generic markings. Once we enter the Bolton Abbey area, with fields and fields between the road and the river, it become more a matter of using one's "walker sense" and less of following signage. Our Trailblazer guide book is helpful, since the author has walked the route and makes good notations on the maps, but still leaves us a little confused. But we'd planned on lunch here and so we walk over to the really up-scale & pricey Devonshire Arms hotel and then along the road to the Tea on the Green tea room for lunch.
After a great lunch of tea & scones plus splitting a ham & cheese sandwich, we headed past the ruined Bolton Abbey, crossed a bridge over the river and found our trail has melded into the just one of the multiple walking trails in this very popular park. After passing through the Cavendish Pavilion area (and enjoying a great "full Alistair" rest- shoes off, laying flat with feet up - for twenty minutes, we walked through the infamous Strid section of the river. This is an area where the river narrows between massive flat limestone layers of stone and entices people to think it's easy to jump the five to six foot width of the river. But it's not easy and should one fall into the fast-moving water, the deeply uncut walls will trap and hold the unfortunate person, usually resulting in drowning.
Soon we got to Barden Bridge and found a ice cream van parked there, serving walkers with the tastiest ice cream we've had in a long time - Yorkshire's Best Ice Cream; I had raspberry cream and Joan had chocolate! Newly invigorated, we walked past Appletreewick (great name!) and soon found ourselves approaching Burnsall, the little town that was our destination for the night. We had booked at the Devonshire Fell Hotel (a sister facility of the Devonshire Arms) as a reward for our 14 mile first day and it was worth it! Joan loved the fluffy bathrobe awaiting her on the bed in our room and the food in the dining room was superb. Ah but such luxury was not to be continued, for most of the rest of the way we'll be staying in pubs or smaller inns.
The Dales Way is described in our Trailblazer book as being one of the easiest long-distance trails in England, with "a wealth of signposts and superb maintenance of the trail-way". The author of the guidebook goes on to say that it can be done "with a baby in a pram" and that most of the walkers are "silver-haired" and inexperienced. As we got further into the walk, we found that this description was sometimes misleading and in fact, in a few locations, bordered on dangerously deceptive.
But let's push the Wabac button and - whir, poof - we're back on June 23rd and we're just gotten off a Ryanair flight from Shannon airport in Ireland over the Irish Sea to Manchester in England. Thanks to great transportation planning, the train terminal is only a 10 minute walk (all indoors) built as part of the big Manchester airport complex. I bought my tickets online for the Pennine Express train to the Dales Way starting point in Ilkley; we have to change trains in Leeds (I'm surprised to learn that Leeds is the second largest railway station in England) so we found our way over to the far end of the terminal and got on a local train for the next 20 of so miles to Ilkley. It was a short walk to our inn for the night and we checked in at the bar for our room at the Dalesway Hotel. Our trans-Atlantic flight jet lag is over now, thanks to the prior four wonderful days we've spent in Ireland and today in Ilkley is clear and partly sunny. After a quick breakfast, we headed across the street and into the big town park next to the River Wharfe. We will be following this river system upstream for miles as we walk north. We are in high latitudes and since its only a few days since the summer solstice, the sun rose at 4:30 in the morning and will set about 10:30 at night.
The first five or six miles of our planned 14 mile walk today is flat and next to the river. We pass through wooded outlying residential areas and then long stretches where it seems to be only us on the trail. Soon we cross the boundary of the Yorkshire Dales National Park and our way becomes a little more complicated, since the signage we'd been following - a signpost marked "Dales Way Footpath" or else a round yellow sticker pasted on a fence-post or stile with an bold arrow and words indicating it's for Dales Way - seem to change into more generic markings. Once we enter the Bolton Abbey area, with fields and fields between the road and the river, it become more a matter of using one's "walker sense" and less of following signage. Our Trailblazer guide book is helpful, since the author has walked the route and makes good notations on the maps, but still leaves us a little confused. But we'd planned on lunch here and so we walk over to the really up-scale & pricey Devonshire Arms hotel and then along the road to the Tea on the Green tea room for lunch.
Soon we got to Barden Bridge and found a ice cream van parked there, serving walkers with the tastiest ice cream we've had in a long time - Yorkshire's Best Ice Cream; I had raspberry cream and Joan had chocolate! Newly invigorated, we walked past Appletreewick (great name!) and soon found ourselves approaching Burnsall, the little town that was our destination for the night. We had booked at the Devonshire Fell Hotel (a sister facility of the Devonshire Arms) as a reward for our 14 mile first day and it was worth it! Joan loved the fluffy bathrobe awaiting her on the bed in our room and the food in the dining room was superb. Ah but such luxury was not to be continued, for most of the rest of the way we'll be staying in pubs or smaller inns.
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