We were meant to be heading down to Exmoor at the start of March, but we ended up having to postpone our trip for completely unrelated reasons (huge shout out to the lovely people at The Best of Exmoor for being so understanding). With the beautiful weather making an appearance, we cheered ourselves up with a visit to Mallerstang in the Eden Valley, a criminally underrated part of the Yorkshire Dales national park just over the border with Cumbria.
This post contains affiliate links. As a Best of Exmoor associate, I will earn a small commission from qualifying purchases, at no additional cost to you. I only recommend products I have purchased myself and which I genuinely recommend.
We followed a 5.5 mile circular route from the OS maps app – I wouldn’t particularly recommend this route, as while the first half of the walk was great, the second half was not particularly up my street (more to follow later). Instead I’d suggest following the Pennine Bridleway from The Thrang to the Watercut as a linear route.
There’s free parking for 4-5 cars in a small lay-by near the start (What3Words ///uplifting.roadmap.february). Surprisingly there were already 2 cars there when we arrived at around 9am on a Sunday morning: we’re used to this part of the world being totally deserted! It was a truly lovely day though, the first properly sunny Sunday of the year, so I can’t be too surprised that there were more people out enjoying the countryside than usual.
The first few miles of the route climb pretty gently uphill along the Pennine Bridleway, with great views of Wild Boar Fell to the right and the Watercut just about visible as a tiny dot on the horizon (assuming you get a clear day!). The Watercut was our main objective for the day, with both of us having wanted to visit it for years, but never quite getting around to it.
One of 10 sculptures dotted throughout the Eden Valley, the Watercut is designed to evoke the image of the River Eden shaping the landscape. Perched on the hillside, it makes a cracking view even better and is well worth a visit. It’s one of those rare places which we thought was better in real life than in pictures on the internet.
After enjoying the views at the Watercut we carried on along the Pennine Bridleway, with the incline levelling off and the lovely views continuing. We were having a wonderful time and thoroughly enjoying our walk, right up to when we turned off to return along the lower level of the hillside. This section of the walk was hard work, uneven, rough going and boggy. There’s nothing that makes me grumpy faster than getting wet feet! There’s also one place where a new shiny fence completely cuts across the public footpath: to get across this head uphill for a bit to find the gate through the fence.
It felt like a never ending slog (although it was probably no more than an hour), after which the route spat us out onto the (quiet) main road for a short stretch before looping up the opposite hillside to run parallel to the railway line. With wet feet and tired legs after the ceaseless uneven terrain, we (I) opted to take a lower footpath running through fields to avoid additional uphill climbing (in my defence, we’ve not done much hiking over winter and I’m still trying to get even a moderate level of fitness built back up). This path was happily flat and dry, two of my favourite attributes for any walking trail, and took us pretty much all the way back to the car.
Dog friendly rating: 3/5. Expect to find sheep throughout this walk, as well as a few stiles once you’re past the Watercut. A plus side is that there are quite a few parts of the walk where streams cut across the path, which both of ours appreciated with the warmer weather.
If you’ve enjoyed reading this blog today, subscribe below so that you never miss a post:
