474 Thornton Rust Description and Information | Wensleydale

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474 Thornton Rust Description and Information

Written by the Wanderlust Team

Friday, 30 November 2007

All yon watter, owld lad, tha's bownd ta be rusty

Distance: Five miles.

General Location: Yorkshire Dales.

Start: Thornton Rust.

Right of Way: Public, National Trust permissive paths and open access land. Check for Open Access Restrictions on www.countrysideaccess.gov.uk.

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

Dogs: Not suitable.

Date walked: Saturday 1 April 2006.

Road Route: A684 via Leyburn to Aysgarth, fork left, signed.

Car Parking: Small car park, signed, roadside.

Lavatories: None.

Refreshments: Aysgarth inns, pubs and cafes including The Palmer Flat Hotel, The George & Dragon, cafe at National Park Centr.

Tourist & Public Transport Information: National Parks, Aysgarth 01969 662901.

Terrain: Hill.

Points of interest: Stoney Raise Cairn, half a mile off route.

Difficulty: Seven hundred foot climb.

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

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Wensleydale walking can be some of the best, but the Dales weather was April 1^st showers so we stopped at Leyburn for a coffee and decision time - a low level stroll or possibly a fool’s foray to the heights. There were only a few dabs of cloud on the higher ground and the riverside pastures were likely to be sodden so it was onwards to the village of Thornton Rust for the up and up.

In the little car park a cheerful farmer with a sprig of flowers in his pick-up grill laughed and said ‘showers all day’, even mentioned the snow word. Undeterred we filled our sack with waterproofs and did the leg loosening mile along a quiet loop road to a notice that showed a National Trust permissive path up to the summit of Addlebrough. We’ve walked around this tabletop hill for decades, and the CROW Act means that one can explore the top.

At first the pasture was benign. Then the slope sharpened and the route paralleled East Beck which is pretty and fascinating, a limestone stream with cascades, a sink hole, and a resurgence, it disappears under the ground pops back up again, it gushes through ducts in the drystone walls and there's a good waterfall.

Spring comes late in the high deep Dales; I saw one flower, a celandine. Birds had arrived and lapwings flew strong in the breeze. The sun shone, Addlebrough stood solid, and we thought we’d made the right decision on our route. Until the crossing of a wide flat grass terrace when the wind hit, bringing teeth-cracking hail. Bodies wrapped in Gore-Tex, heads down, the aforementioned were gritted for half an hour of grind. Then it stopped, the landscape lit bright again and just in time for the last climb, a steep handful of contours.

In prehistoric days one would have felt safe if not warm up here, the acreage of the top is at an altitude 1500 feet and is surrounded by steep slopes and on most sides with crags.

It was very windy, we snatched a view from the western edge down to Semer Water in Raydale, a rare natural Yorkshire lake. There's a cairn with cup marked rocks but we missed that, hurrying to huddle behind a wall to sup tea. To the east runs Wensleydale and in the clear air the North York Moors were visible forty miles away.

Our descent was steep at first then more gentle over lovely pale gold grasslands. There are lots of little becks and a zone where there was one or two percent heather cover. The River Ure curved through Wensleydale with its adjacent fields mirrored with foodwater. The return was quick, only tricky at a flooded ford just above Thornton Rust. National Trust waymarking was useful, but in poor visibility Addlebrough wouldn’t have been nice.

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