Easter weekend was very nearly a complete miss for getting out exploring. Bookended by lovely weather either side, I was prepared to be very cross — after spending most of the weekend stuck inside watching the trees outside bending over in the wind — until the fifty mile per hour gusts miraculously dropped on Easter Monday. As always on a bank holiday weekend we wanted a walk away from the crowds, and Sam picked a cracker on the very western edge of the Yorkshire Dales.
Nine Standards Rigg has been on the radar for a very long time, but all of the walks up there in our walking guides are long: all in the region of twelve miles or so. Having spent a sedentary winter sat in the warmth of my living room, I don’t think I’m quite back up to fitness for a twelve mile walk yet! Happily, Sam had a peruse of the OS maps app and found this shorter four and a half mile route.
There’s a small parking area just past the start of the route, by the sign for the Yorkshire Dales national park. This is the weird part of the Yorkshire Dales which are actually in Cumbria – and they are somewhere we always, always say we should visit more. Ruggedly beautiful, wild and remote feeling, it feels thousands of miles away from the honeypot Dales villages in Wensleydale and Wharfedale.
The route is mainly linear, heading out across the moor via a cool limestone pavement-y bit, before looping round at the top to re-join the main route out. Although the route has a few uphills, they’re mainly pretty gentle, so I was pretty shocked by how knackered I was by the end! Must get out more…
Perhaps I was tired because the walking was harder work than I’m used to – mainly a grassy trod with the odd interlude of pathless tramping through heather. Regardless, it didn’t feel miserable or bleak at all – there were ever present views of the surrounding hills and with the blue sky, it was lovely. And, there’s a fab flagged path at the top of the climb, right when you need it most (i.e. after the pathless heathery bit, although I’m not convinced we’d gone the right way – Sam maintains there were no navigational errors…).
The objective of the walk is Nine Standards Rigg: a summit crowned by nine huge stone cairns. I’m not sure how long they’ve been there but they certainly have a commanding position. The cairns are similar to those on Wild Boar Fell, but I think Nine Standards Rigg just pips it as the better view. The descent is also easier than coming down Swarth Fell was when we did Wild Boar Fell!
Given that a) it was Easter Monday, b) the weather was perfect and c) Nine Standards Rigg is along the Coast to Coast route, we saw a lot fewer people than I was expecting. It wasn’t totally deserted but we only saw a handful of other walkers – marvellous. This is right on the edge of the Eden Valley and it’s such an underrated spot: we’ve done a few walks around here and they’ve always been both lovely and very low on crowds (see my blogs on The Watercut and Dufton Pike). It was gratifying seeing all the cars queuing to get across to the Lake District on our way home!
Dog friendly rating: 3.5. The big wins for dogs on this walk are that it’s stile and obstacle free, and that there are a couple of big puddles/mini ponds (if you know you know) that they can have a dip in. It’s also nice and quiet if you have a reactive dog. We didn’t see any livestock, but I think you can expect to see sheep and cows up here. One thing to keep in mind is that this route relies on access land at times rather than public rights of way: there are no dog bans in place here, but access rules stipulate that dogs must be on a short, fixed lead from 1 April to 31 July.
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