Wasn’t the start of March lovely? There was a definite feeling of Spring in the air, with sunshine and warmer temperatures which even lasted into the weekend (although as I write this, the sunshine has been replaced with freezing fog and I’ve got a hot water bottle on my knee). With blue skies all weekend, we seized the opportunity to do a fairly local walk which we’d done before but which we didn’t get a view from: Buckden Pike.
One of the Dales 30, Buckden Pike is a popular fell in Wharfedale, usually tackled on its own but sometimes as part of the Wharfedale Three Peaks (a shorter, less busy alternative to the Yorkshire Three Peaks). While there are a few options for a circular route to the top, we were pressed for time and so opted for a linear up and down – which is also the driest option.
There’s a National Park pay & display car park in the village of Buckden, which fits a good number of cars but which tends to fill up quickly when the weather is good. We were nearly the first ones there at around 8.30am on a Saturday in March, but it was full when we got back down a few hours later. The route up the hill picks up straight from the car park and climbs pretty steadily nearly all the way to the top. It’s steep enough to notice a bit of an incline, but not enough to overly slow you down or bring on the dreaded jelly legs on the way down.
Mostly the trail is good, petering out at one point in the middle where it gets boggy, before the flagged path reappears. There are a few shorter steeper sections on the final approach to the summit and at the top you’ll find not only a trig pillar but a nice seat/wind shelter, with views across the the Dales (you can just about make out the tops of the Three Peaks in the distance).
If you don’t mind a bit more walking, you can cross the stile by the trig pillar to continue on to a war memorial. This stone cross was erected in memory of a Polish crew who crashed here in a snow storm in 1940: only one of the crew survived. The cross is a poignant memorial, with pieces of the aircraft embedded into the base.
We retraced our steps from the top, seeing a lot more people on our way down than on our way up, including several groups who looked like they were training for their Duke of Edinburgh award (and who may have succumbed to the ‘over the boots bog’). The descent is easy walking, only requiring attention to where you’re placing your feet in a few places, and we were back down to the car park in next to no time. Unfortunately we were well ahead of pub opening times, so we had to head straight home!
Dog friendly rating: 3/5. Like many walks in the Yorkshire Dales, you can expect to find sheep and ground nesting birds throughout this route, so we kept our dogs on leads for the entire walk. If you’re planning to bag Buckden Pike with your dog, you should be aware that most of the access land here is subject to a dog ban: you can still take your dog, as long as you stick to public rights of way. This rules out non-linear routes, as the public footpath only runs from the car park up to the summit. The footpath up to the trig from the car park is stile free.
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