Summer has arrived with a bang over the last week or two! With the temperature at the weekend set to creep up to twenty degrees, we abandoned our plans to head over to the Lake District as we felt it would be a bit too warm for the dogs to be out in the sun all day on a fell side. Instead, we opted for a relatively local river walk exploring Arkengarthdale, the last bastion of the Yorkshire Dales before North Yorkshire gives way to County Durham. I have to say it was also handy to do a shorter walk which gave me time to catch up on two weeks worth of dirty washing in the afternoon! Alas, it’s not all hiking and exploring.
The route we followed was a slightly amended version of this six mile circular hike on Where2Walk. Starting from the pretty village of Langthwaite (which has two pubs, which would’ve been the perfect place to stop for lunch if we hadn’t been in the car on the way home before they opened), we parked in the pay and display car park. I love parking here because there’s a flock of chickens who are usually knocking around inspecting all the cars.
We followed the walk in a clockwise direction, choosing to get the majority of the road walking out of the way at the start. It’s no chore strolling along the road here – the views of the surrounding countryside are lovely. Langthwaite is a charming little village with an impressive church, after which we turned off and picked up a footpath to continue on our way.
Ambling along the valley parallel to the river was exceptionally pleasant. We did this walk in the first week of June and the countryside was quite literally exploding with life: the hay meadows were in full bloom, verges were bursting with cow parsley and crossing the river we spotted a duck with a gaggle of ducklings in tow. While the terrain undulates up and down a little, it’s far from strenuous and easily manageable.
The paths were mostly grassy fields tracks, well used enough to be easy to spot even in summer when grasses are high. And if you can’t spot them, the river helps make sure you don’t lose your bearings. We did encounter a slight issue when the path crossed through someone’s garden and their dog had a good bark at us through the gate – there was no way that we wanted to take our reactive dog in there! Happily we were able to circumnavigate this by walking around the house to the right and then left through a gap in the drystone wall shortly after. In fairness I’d probably get fed up having a public right of way running through my garden too!
We crossed the river a bit earlier than the Where2Walk route to make the walk a little bit shorter, and walked out towards Whaw as a linear out and back. The hay meadows here really were beautiful, and the riverside offered frequent shady sections which were perfect on a sunny day with the dogs. There were a lot of midges near the river but we just walked through them briskly and they happily left us alone.
Unbelievably, we didn’t see a single other person on our walk. I suppose everyone must have gone to the beach for the day, but I still can’t believe somewhere so lovely isn’t more popular. There are more Arkengarthdale walks on my list to do in the near future, we’ll have to time it better next time and stop off at the CB Inn for lunch before we head home!
Dog friendly rating 3.5/5. We kept ours on leads all the way around this walk – there were sheep in lots of the fields, and the wildflower hay meadows are often home to ground nesting birds who are easily disturbed. There are plenty of stiles to clamber over, but on the plus side, these are all the kind that are built into drystone walls and easy enough to get your dog through. While the route follows the river, it’s not accessible at all times, with just a few sections where the river can be accessed easily (by sheep as well as by you!). That being said this was a great option for us on a sunny day when we wanted a short-ish walk with water nearby.
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