The main attraction for walkers and day trippers in the Durham Dales in without a doubt the waterfall at High Force, widely regarded as one of England’s most spectacular waterfalls. But did you know that just around the corner, and reachable from the same car park that most people use to visit High Force, is another, less well known waterfall?
Just a short walk from the car park at Bowlees Visitor Centre, the waterfall of Summerhill Force is tucked away and often missed by people making their way to High Force. As the waterfall is so close to the car park, it’s not much of a dog walk, so while we were there we also did a short circular walk of around a mile and a half that I’d found on the OS maps app.
The OS route sets off through a small woodland, gradually uphill, with a surprisingly dry track given how wet it had been in the run up to our visit (although maybe the ground was a bit frozen). The muddiest sections were navigable by small wooden bridges, however, the first one was so slippery that I nearly stacked it and therefore we chose to walk around the mud rather than over it the next times!
We soon left the woods via a stile in a wall (which I walked straight past and only Sam noticed that we needed to cross). The next section of the walk was across a grassy fell side, with the path being practically invisible – we relied heavily on our OS maps app to stay on course. The route drops down steadily before crossing another stile, where the descent steepens to ford a river.
I’m not sure if there were meant to be stepping stones here or not: there might’ve been some submerged by the recent rain! Either way there were none on this occasion and we ended up taking a bit of a running jump to cross the river.
Once we’d crossed the river it wasn’t long before we were back at the car park, which had filled up a lot since we’d arrived. I was wondering if this meant that Summerhill Force would be busy, but as soon as we got past the toilet block the number of people decreased almost immediately.
To get to Gibson’s Cave and Summerhill Force, follow the sign from the car park (don’t cross the bridge to pick up the path to High Force), and follow the track all the way to the waterfall (when you see the steps keep going, this is the right way). Don’t be tempted to cross the wooden bridge over the river like we were as this path leads to a dead end! It’s really not far and in no time at all we were at the falls. They were fairly heavy as we’ve had so much rain recently, but in summer when it’s drier it’s possible to actually walk behind the drop of the falls without getting too wet.
Dog friendly rating – 4/5. The woods at the start are a great opportunity to let your dog off the lead, and well behaved dogs could probably also be off lead on the riverside path leading to the waterfall. Both the river and the stream crossed on the hillside provide an opportunity for your dog to have a drink or a paddle, and the stiles were all the easy to cross steps built into a stone wall kind. We did see sheep on the hillside that we walked across, as well as ‘evidence’ of cows (although we didn’t actually see any cows).
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