Decisions, decisions, always decisions, it's never black and white

Distance: Five and a half miles.

General Location: The Yorkshire Dales.

Start: Dacre Banks near Summerbridge.

Right of Way: Public.

Dogs: Legal.

Map: Drawn from OS Explorer 298 Nidderdale.

Date walked: Monday 26 December 2005.

Road Route: From York, via Knaresborough.

Car Parking: Roadside.

Lavatories: None.

Refreshments: Pub at Dacre Banks  - The Royal Oak Inn, and Inn at Summerbridge.

Tourist & Public Transport Information: Pateley Bridge TIC 01423 711147.

Terrain: Valleyside.

Points of interest: The massive mill wheel by the church bearing the village name.

Difficulty: Tricky navigation.

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

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.

Dacre Banks is one of a string of villages in lower Nidderdale that were industrially important due to the waterpower the River Nidd provided. A modern sawmill yard is eye-catching.

Otherwise our exit from Dacre’s houses was just five unremarkable minutes. However the start of our proper walking, on the Nidderdale Way no less, was and is of note being a peculiar messy scramble at a farm. All that lasts only a few hundred yards and then came a mile or so on pasture land with oak trees, an easy gradient with some tracks, one called Monk Ing Road. There is a length on old flags or trod but the stones are rather dislocated.

We were in an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty, in a valley of villages set in green. On the highest point of the far horizon stand Brimham Rocks, half veiled by trees. There's more of this grit stone all around in the drystone walls, the dark blocks brightened by green algae, lichens and mosses.

The hamlet of Heyshaw is nice with only one house looking out of place. By now the scattered white balls of the eavesdropping station at Menwith Hill were visible miles away.

At an altitude of a thousand feet the horizon turns to rock and there are quarry heaps of the stuff that have been colonised by heather. There's also a towering communications mast and that together with rain had us scurrying off, hurrying down quite steep paths through the winter withered bracken, past little overgrown quarries to find shelter for a quick snatch at a sandwich.

The black cliffs along the tops gave the place an extra sombre feel, and I think this is a rainy part of the world. A raptor, a big one with narrow scythe shaped wings, hovered very high, stooped for perhaps fifty feet, hovered again, then closed its wings and dropped near vertical and fast.

Our walk trundled on quite nicely on a good grassy track and then began a slow descent that parallels the line of the valley floor. A buzzard cruised on broad wings, the rain persisted, and there’s a sighting northwest to wilder lands.

We counted down the valley villages and named places as we tracked above them - Glasshouses where flax and hemp were milled, Wilsill, Low Laithe and Smelthouses, all small, New York even smaller though again with mills. A beck reminded of the River Nidd, gaggles of walkers that we were back on the beaten track, and soon Summerbridge was near and we were done. A steady walk, a good work out, easier if the ground were frozen or dry.

Image Gallery

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

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