484 Reeth Description and Information | Swaledale

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484 Reeth Description and Information

Written by the Wanderlust Team

Friday, 30 November 2007

Reet nice, Reeth

Distance: Five and a half miles.

General Location: Yorkshire Dales.

Start: Reeth.

Right of Way: Public except for short ‘Right to Roam’ to trig point. Check for Open Access Restrictions on www.countrysideaccess.gov.uk.

Map: Drawn from OS Explorer OL30 Yorkshire Dales northern and central areas.

Dogs: Legal if you deny them the trig point view.

Date walked: May 2006.

Road Route: From York, via A1 and Richmond.

Car Parking: Reeth market place, honesty box.

Lavatories: Reeth market place.

Refreshments: Pubs, inns, cafes and restaurants in Reeth.

Tourist & Public Transport Information: National Parks Reeth 01748 884059.

Terrain: Fell and fellside.

Points of interest: Good NYCC and Parish Paths ladderstile on Fremington Edge.

Difficulty: Steep descent.

Please observe the Country Code and park sensibly. While every effort is made to provide accurate information, walkers set out at their own risk.

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

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Summer or no it was comforting to sit by the log fire in the Kings Arms, looking out over the green in the centre of Reeth and through the rain to Fremington Edge our destination, the high curtain of ground that so much adds to the physical drama of this northern Dales town.

A coffee ran to two. Eventually, loaded with sandwiches of local cheese, on came the seasonal waterproofs. We trudged across the buttercups, against the hail, along the drystone walls, below the tree band, Swaledale views vanishing instead of expanding.

Out came the sun, off came the waterproofs and up came some views of colouring meadows while blackbirds ferried beakfulls of grubs, and sweet cicely scented the verges.

Then it was on with some exercise, a back lane, steep as I remembered but not so vehicle free this day, a few drivers seem to have discovered it to gun up in competition hill climb style. Remembered the old image, that if one drove vertically at a legal sixty, in an hour one would enter outer space – ‘for the heart of the sun’, best place for some?

But the tar took us up many contours, sandwiches the reward. Then the sky blacked out from the north. The top edge of Fremington Edge was just a few fleece-shedding sheep away. Then a track by the heather, the pulling of zips, the tightening of drawcords, the angling of heads, expecting two miles of weather at 1400 feet with nothing to see, the great valley greyed out, aware that the track passed close to a trig point, enjoying the blast in a way, shoulders hunched, shoulders shrugged.

We stopped when we calculated we were near, that it was a few hundred yards north on the heather, and turned for the obligatory visit, the ticking off of trigonometric number 42, as in ‘life the universe and everything’ if nothing else. By chance, by magic, the sun switched on and there was the four foot high truncated taper of concrete and there, beyond the hills and 30 miles northeast, the shimmering simmering storage tanks of Teesside.

The revelation lasted ten minutes; Fremington Edge held another torrential mile.

Then again, timing perfect, there was time for basking backs to a wall looking down to Reeth aglow, a readying for our most direct descent here ever, spurning the usual inclined track and instead mixing and matching the threads on the grass that zigzags 1 in 3 steep, a drop of 700 slithery feet of altitude.

Dripping in, I looked up and there on the town’s raised Reeth Green was a sight to draw the Reeth menfolk from their quoits match. Arabesque - suspending from hoops from a filigree arch – stretched, coiled and curving against the Swaledale Festival sky, two, identical, double vision, except one in stretch-tight green the other blue, a two trick day, the other being the trig point.

Image Gallery

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