Whernside

At Winterscales Farm I got off the track to let a farmer on his ATV pass. Before reaching me he stopped and walked over to a farm gate at the side of the track. I continued walking towards him. As he fiddled with his hairy string gate latch I gave him my best 'Good morning.' He continued untangling the hairy string and muttered something like 'ahyafkngwlkgtristfatrsedbstrd.' I considered asking him how his Swaledales were doing, but he seemed too engrossed in his hairy string. I didn't fayre much better when I shouted a greeting to a farmer stood by a trailer, further down the lane. 'Harrurr' was his reluctant, grunted response. I got the feeling that the local farmers weren't that enamoured with walkers. 

It didn't take me long to reach the Yorkshire Three Peaks track leading up to Whernside, and I started making the ascent. A strong, bitter wind was blowing along the valley and I had to stop to put another layer on. The lower parts of the path is slabbed and quite easy. The second phase is steeper and has stone steps. The awkward bit is the last and steepest section to the ridge. What a surprise though! It looked like somebody had constructed some new stone steps since my last visit. These had replaced some awful ones, the remnants of which I could occasionally see near the new ones. The new version were muddy and a little slippery, but nowhere near as bad as what had been there before. I soon got to he top of the ridge and wondered why I'd fussed so much...I'd be quite happy going down those steps on a future Yorkshire Three Peaks Venture.

I started walking along the well worn ridge path to the summit. Inevitably I started ascending into mist and the wind started getting quite wild. Pools of water had frozen over too and it felt quite wintery. It always seems to take a long time to get to the summit on the ridge path. As I approached the summit, I could just see through the mist, a couple of walkers and a pair of dogs approaching me along the north ridge.  I increased my pace and managed to get a leeward position at the stone shelter at the top. The other walkers turned out to be a couple of young women. 'Is the summit further along?' one of them asked me. 'No. This is the summit. There's a trig on the other side of the stone wall' I informed them. They both went through the stile in the stone wall to investigate. 'Are you doing the 3 Peaks?' I asked them. 'Just Whernside today. I've done the 3 Peaks before though.' I wondered why she'd not recognised the summit with its distinctive shelters. 

North Of Whernside

The first time I did the Yorkshire Three Peaks was in the 70s on a school outing. Apart from the aching muscles, I don't remember that much from the walk. One thing I do remember is making a steep ascent up Whernside's eastern face, almost directly to the summit. I looked at the steepness of that face now and I seriously wonder whether it was a false memory. We definitely didn't do the long, gradually sloped northern loop that Yorkshire Three Peaker's have to do now to gain the summit. I remember doing that direct assault to the summit on another Yorkshire Three Peaks occasion too, so maybe it isn't a false memory. 

The wind seemed to get stronger and colder as I made my way down the north ridge. I started meeting people making their way up, but the wind was too noisy to make conversation. I dropped out of the mist and was so taken by view to the east that I missed my turnoff on to the Pennine Journey path over to the Whernside Tarns. When the Yorkshire Three Peaks path turned eastwards back to the viaduct, I realised my mistake. It wasn't much of a problem though since I was able to straddle over an unbarbed fence and make my way over to the north bound track on Knoutberry Hill. To be honest, it wasn't much of a track and was non-existant a lot of the time. I'd guess very few people are tempted by this Whernside extension. The landscape was certainly wild with those huge Yorkshire Dales panoramas opening up as I descended. The Whernside Tarns were larger than expected and half frozen. I looked westwards and was pretty sure I could see some Lakeland fells. They looked to be in sun, which slightly annoyed me since my recent two weeks up there had been very rainy. 

I saw a prominent cairn over to the west. Looking at the map, I could see three labelled. I made my way across to the visible one and this turned out to be the middle one in the series. I'm glad I made the effort to go across to the cairn since the view down into Dentdale was spectacular. A vague track led me around to the most northern cairn which was taller and better constructed. The cairns weren't on a noticeable path and there location seemed a bit of a mystery to me. I'd guess that the cairns were clearly visible from the bottom of the Dentdale valley.

I started heading back to the Pennine Journey track and came across a substantial stone shelter. Again, it seemed somebody had spent a lot of effort to build something that wasn't actually on a path. Admittedly the vague track of the Pennine Journey was probably only about a 100 metres or so from it, but I wondered how many people would actually make use of it. 

Return To Ribblehead

I dropped down over boggy ground to a grassy track labelled the Craven Way on the OS map. This was where I turned back towards the Ribblehead Viaduct. The track was easy walking and offered good views across to the head of the Dentdale valley. The railway line contoured along the hillside and the Arten Gill Viaduct was clearly visible. The weather had brightened up a bit now and even the sun occasionally broke through the clouds. It was still cold,  even though the wind had dropped now that I was lower down. 

 My track eventually merged with the Whernside northern section of the Yorkshire Three Peaks path. The summit of Whernside still seemed to be in mist. I took a small diversion to have a look at the waterfall at Force Gill. Normally there doesn't seem to be that much water running down it, but due to the recent rain, it put on a good show today and was worth the diversion. That path back to the viaduct does seem to take a long time. Ingleborough had lost its mist and I could admire the distinct profile of its western face. Construction workers were refubishing the signal box at Bleamoor Sidings. At least they would have been if they hadn't been sat in a cabin drinking tea. Greyness had crept back in by the time I'd got back to the Ribblehead Viaduct and it looked almost as gloomy as it had done this morning. I had been hoping I might get a photo of a sunset or maybe a rainbow through one of its arches. No such luck. I didn't find Leeds Rhino man back at the carpark. His car had gone too. Maybe he'd just given up on the idea of walking and departed as soon as I'd plodded out of sight.

Whernside is a classic Yorkshire Dales walk. It has epic views and a spectacular start and finish at he Ribblehead viaduct. It had been the first time I'd explored the northern section of Whernside. It was certainly worth making the effort. Those views down into Dentdale had been excellent.