How green was my valley?

Distance: Five miles.

General Location: Howgills.

Start: Rawthey Bridge  (Near side road signed Uldale Fell End). Grid Reference on Map & Directions page.

Right of Way: The route is along public rights of way and in open access land.

 Map: Based on OS Explorer OL19 Howgill Fells and Upper Eden Valley.

Date walked: Monday 5 September 2005.

Road Route: Five miles northeast of Sedbergh on the A683.

Car Parking: Parking area 100 yards west of Rawthey Bridge.

Lavatories: None.

Refreshments: Cross Keys Temperance Inn.

Tourist & Public Transport Information: Sedbergh TIC 015396 20125.

Map: Based on OS Explorer OL19 Howgill Fells & Upper Eden Valley.

Terrain: Riverside and valley.

Points of interest: Today's Uldale not to be confused with Uldale in the Lake District.

Difficulty: Moderate.

Please click the image below to go to the walking route sketch map and detailed directions, or scroll down to a Google Map of the route, the route description, and an image gallery. Plus you can bookmark this page on your favourite social bookmarking site, and comment on the walk. We hope you enjoy the walk. 

Googlemap

Please click on "Map" to see a cartographic map view of the route and "Hybrid" to see the combined map and Satellite. Please use the zoom tools or drag the slider to move in close or to zoom out (or use mousewheel zoom). Use the pan tools to move the map vertically and horizontally or place your mouse over the map and it changes to a hand; click your mouse to "grab" the map to manually scroll the map in any direction. The two hikers icon shows the start of the route and clicking on it will show the route starting direction.

Please note that the outline route is a guide only and on full or near full zoom cannot be guaranteed to follow every twist and turn of the route described.

 If you can’t see the walk on the Google Map, please refresh.

The River Rawthey is, in its upper reaches near Sedbergh, part of the northeast boundary of the Yorkshire Dales National Park.

A comfy track wound us up out of sticky heat to the freshness of the fells. We were up quite high on the southern side of the Uldale, a flank of rough rank grasses, rushes, and countless seepages and springs. By contrast the land the other side of the river was divided into neat pastures with a farm here and there and some stylish woods.

Half an hour or so later we had dropped down to the river, to a bridge and a series of cascades nice and noisy. Soon there was a bigger fall, perhaps 20 foot, and this seemed a good place for a sandwich, perched high on a vertigo vantage spot above the spray, the steep cut chasm draped with ferns, the space part packed with beech, ash, willow and birch, the clear air patrolled by dragon flies and the water by a dipper.

A heron lifted, the path roughened up, rock layers angled at 30 degrees, pied wagtails hopped from stone to stone and at an old quarry site the rock is laminated like a pre-sliced loaf. We pushed on and were just thinking that it wasn’t going to be easy to get much further when we were rewarded by a waterfall on a side stream, a thin ribbon dropping perhaps forty feet to a platform and then further into a pool.

Now we considered our return. Had noticed a dilapidated gate on the far bank of the river, and that a bridleway led down to it. But not quite, on the OS map this bridleway stops about a hundred yards short of the river, I’ve confirmed this with the local Park Ranger. Pity the thirsty horse. It’s one of the most annoying anomalies we have come across. Consequently you can’t legally make a connection here.

So one has to retrace ones steps to the bridge near a mile downriver to cross. The road thereafter is mostly track connecting farms and houses. From this side the buildings are easily seen and to judge by their quality the quarry might have been quite important.

To finish the circuit and minimise the highway element we did some right to roaming and then finished up at the Cross Keys Inn, a nearby National Trust place. In the car park they were filling a container with old bikes for use in South Africa. This is a ‘unique’ inn being temperance since the owner was involved in a drunken death at Rawthey Bridge about a hundred years ago. So no beer but a nice cup of tea and a super view of the Howgill Hills.

Image Gallery

Please click on the word "Pictures" to toggle the thumbnails on and off. Hover your mouse over the image to see the forward and back arrows to view the gallery. 

{smoothgallery folder=images/stories/450uldale}

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Copyright (C) 2007 Alain Georgette / Copyright (C) 2006 Frantisek Hliva. All rights reserved.

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