Back on the early May bank holiday weekend, I finally caved and conceded that bank holidays are just not a great time for a weekend away. Yes, you get an extra day off work without using precious annual leave, but everywhere is heaving with people and it’s generally just far too busy to be able to enjoy a lot of the places we’d like to visit (*cough* Lake District *cough*): especially as owners of a reactive dog who are trying to build up his exposure to people and dogs gradually. Therefore, we stayed at home and stuck to local walks on the Saturday and Sunday, only venturing slightly further afield on the Monday.
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We ended up picking a walk from our local Pocket Mountains guide for the Yorkshire Dales. The route was an 8km circular starting from the town of Pateley Bridge, climbing up through Guisecliff Wood to reach a 19th century folly, and returning on the Nidderdale Way. Really, I should have listed those in reverse order, but we chose to do the route backwards to get the section of the walk that we thought would be busiest done early.
Long stay parking is available at the end of Nidd Walk in Pateley Bridge, at a bargain rate of 80p for up to 4 hours (which is ample time to complete this walk). We set off along the riverside path to reach a pretty lake, where we were lucky enough to spot a cormorant diving, before a short section on a quiet road started the climb uphill.
It wasn’t long before we entered Guiscliff Woods. This is a lovely woodland and was absolutely bursting with life, with about a thousands different shades of green and Spring in full force. We visited in early May and there were plenty of bluebells about, in addition to the interesting collection of boulders scattered through the woods which you can see all year. It’s worth a quick detour from the main path to visit Guiscliff Tarn, a small lake which both of our dogs had a paddle in to cool off, as even at 9.30am it was warming up quickly.
Once we’d finished at the tarn we returned to the main path and resumed our climb up through the woods. The gradient is steady without being overly taxing, but we’d both shed a layer by the time we got to the top! Here we joined the Nidderdale Way to walk along the top of Guise Cliff. There are some decent views back down over Pateley Bridge and Nidderdale, and more interesting boulders to look at. Keep to the main path up here as there are some sheer drops which are fairly obscured by the undergrowth.
Up here it’s fairly flat, if a little uneven underfoot in places, and it wasn’t long before we reached Yorke’s Folly. According to our guide book, this folly was constructed by a local magnate in the early 19th century as a way of providing employment for local people, who were paid a shilling and a loaf of bread a day. Originally there were three towers, but only two remain today after a storm destroyed the third tower in 1893.
From here we began our descent, dropping through heathery scrub to a quiet road, which we crossed to continue descending into Skrikes Nature Reserve. This wooded area had signs up asking for dogs to be kept on leads, which should be respected, and led us to a final steeper section of descent in an open field grazed by sheep. We soon came to a country lane which we followed back to the start in Pateley Bridge.
Dog friendly rating – 3.5/5. While you can let your dog have a run off the lead in Guisecliff Woods and on some of the riverside section, for most of the rest of the walk we kept ours on leads due to hidden drops/livestock/signs asking for dogs to be kept on leads. There is a reasonable section along the road at the start or end (depending on which way you go around), some of which has no pavement. There are no stiles on this walk, other than one stile with an extremely dilapidated fence next to it, which we were easily able to just step over. For a bank holiday this was a fairly quiet walk, but we did still come across a few people.
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