(11th September 2024 – 15½ miles)

We had last been in Skipton two years previously. Back then, Jim and I were hiking the Dales High Way – a smashing long distance footpath which I have yet to write up and post to The Walking Gardener. Sorry.

But hey. Enough self flagellation. On this our second Skipton visit, we’d travelled up to Yorkshire to walk the Lady Anne’s Way, a 100 mile path to Penrith, Cumbria. And having stayed at The Woolly Sheep last time… we decided to swerve it this time.

Instead, we plumped for The Railway. It was OK. Not a vast improvement over the ‘Sheep but OK. And, big plus, unlike the ‘Sheep the cooked breakfast was pretty good and – bigger plus – had no explosion of catering grade cooking oil when you bit into it.

We had driven up from our home in Gloucestershire and parked on somebody’s driveway. (Not randomly but arranged through the justpark app.) Infuriatingly this long, return drive plus parking fee proved a far, far cheaper option than catching the train. That’s how broken our public transport system is.

With the Railway’s decent cooked breakfast stuck to our ribs, we strode out through early morning Skipton. As in September 2022, the weather in  September 2024 was dry and fine. It seems the sun always shines in Skipton. Perhaps that’s why, in December 2025, it was voted the UK’s happiest place to live.

It’s a nice little town (with an excellent Mediterranean/Turkish restaurant) but having now spent two nights there, and being already happy-ish people, we were anxious to set off and put some miles behind us.

Sadly Lady Anne’s birthplace, Skipton Castle, was closed when we had arrived the previous day and closed as we left. One day we’ll come back to Skipton when the castle is open – no doubt in full sun.

Having grabbed some lunch, and stuffed it into our day sacks, we scurried out from stone, brick and tarmac into open countryside.

This exit from Skipton follows the Dales High Way route; climbing swiftly and quietly glorious …

… to reveal the town behind and below. Till next time, sunny Skipton.

We gingerly mastered the bypass (it’s busy and there’s no crossing) and Skipton Golf Course

to where the Dales High Way turns westward, the Lady Anne east. Incidentally, the above footpath marker for the latter features the fabulous door knocker from Brougham Hall –

though we wouldn’t see this verdigris beauty for many, many, many miles. Superb isn’t it?

As we fell into the rhythm of one foot after the other, the weather continued to be bright – if cold – the going easy.

We headed toward the village of Embsay, pausing to study stately old houses

and a shut pub: always a sadness.

On occasion, the official route took fairly convoluted, seemingly overlong diversions to avoid a bit of pavement walking. Where this was obvious and seemingly of little benefit, we learnt early on to ignore the guidebook and follow our noses along quiet country lanes or village streets rather than take a route twice as long through unexceptional fields. But this is a very minor gripe of the route.

We carried only our light day sacks with Skipton lunch, water bottles and waterproofs. My days of walking with a full rucksack are, sadly, behind me.

The miles were bright, the conversation easy (one would hope so, given that Jim and I have been together for over 30 years), the landscape quite lovely; slowly unfurling to the tap-tap of walking poles. This quiet exploration of landscapes, for day after day, is my best happy time.

As elevenses approached, Jim sprinted ahead for a hot date…

with a cold Skipton pasty.

We found a shady rock on which to perch for the pasty with glug of Yorkshire water. Fine dining indeed…

and set off once again, parallel to the Embsay and Bolton Abbey Steam Railway.

Shortly afterwards, and having met another – but incredibly rare – Lady Anne’s Way walker we had an equally rare rain shower. It was one of those irritating, short lived deluges; by the time we’d pulled on Goretex, it was over.

We descended towards the River Wharfe along a bit of quiet tarmac and approached Lady Anne’s second home on the trail – Barden Tower.

She restored this hunting lodge in the 1650s and used it often – even though, strictly speaking, it didn’t belong to her. After her death, the building fell slowly to ruin and has been so for 200 years.

Just beyond Barden Tower, we crossed over Barden Bridge and joined the River Wharf for a few miles of easy level walking before day’s end.

This stretch of the river was fairly busy – and I’m not surprised.

It’s easy on the eye and easy underfoot. It’s also beautiful and calming but this footpath alongside the Wharf is also the Dales Way – which partly accounted for how much busier it was. 

This was so very different from my experience of walking the Dales Way in 2012.

Then it was bitterly cold, the icy slippy path treacherous and difficult to walk upon.

As well as Dales Way walkers, the path was busy with dog walkers. Most people were friendly and only a couple made that concerted effort to ignore us completely – intently inspecting the horizon over our shoulders or the ground beneath their feet as they passed. Isn’t it easier just to smile and say hello?

Both of us were growing weary. Today was a fairly long day and with no distance walking preparation beforehand it was the longest walk we’d undertaken in months.

We hadn’t rested since the pasty pause and increasingly tried to decide where to stop.

I thought of diverting into Appletreewick – somewhere I’ve always wanted to visit. By all accounts it’s a pretty place (with the Craven Arms looking like my kind of place) though the village’s name is seemingly too long: locally its four syllables are contracted to two – Ap’trick. But as alluring as Ap’trick looked, we decided to press on. I remembered that up ahead there was a warm alternative in Burnsall.

The Wharfe flowed toward us,

and away with sedate views all around.

We chatted about the beautiful houses we saw – the ones we would buy and move into and from which carve ourselves a new life (all the while knowing it would never happen; that we are wedded to Gloucestershire).

Finally at Burnsall, after about 12 miles, I welcomed a pint at the Red Lion as much as I had in the winter of 2012. It’s a grand old dame of a pub and slotted in perfectly with my memory as so very, very hygge following a long Yorkshire traipse.

After that swift pint and with humming feet, we rejoined the Wharf, eschewing the Lady Anne’s Way where she climbed away from the river to pass through upper fields to the village of Hebden. I’m happy to adapt paths to suit and we were content to stay by the river, along the Dales Way. If I have walked this stretch of the Wharfe to Grassington, Jim hadn’t.

Signs appeared to our final destination. Day one along the Lady Anne’s Way was almost over.

And after the relative quiet of the riverbank…

the busyness of Grassington was a jolt.

We arrived at about 4.30 after seven and a half hours walk. It’s a pretty little town, Grassington, and served as fictional Darrowby in the latest adaptation of All Creatures Great and Small for Channel 5. You can see why it landed the part.

This new adaptation is, in my opinion, a disappointment – the taming and ironing out of Siegfried Farnon in particular. To my mind, Robert Hardy is the definitive Siegfried: irascible, mercurial, maddening, wonderful. But it was interesting to see how Grassington acted its part so effortlessly. (In two days we would walk through the village of Askrigg which served as Darrowby in the original BBC All Creatures.)

Our stop for the night was one of the best of the week. Ashfield House is right in the centre of town and beautifully designed and welcoming.

And at £135 it was pretty good value too for both comfort and an excellent breakfast; with the town’s pubs all but a short stagger away. For a Wednesday night in September, the town was busy but we managed to grab a table at the Forester’s Arms which was perfectly fine.

After two pints, a belt-busting pie and 15½ miles, I was out cold within minutes of returning to Ashfield House. Tomorrow we’d have an easier 12½ mile day to reach Upper Wharfedale and the Georgian coaching inn at Buckden, the Buck Inn.