Sunday 8th September 2024         Nidderdale Way – Day 1

Walk Leader – Neil Harwood

Number on walk – 5

Distance – 19 miles

Weather – Grey, low cloud and intermittent rain all day.

It was an early 7.20am start back in Lancashire to make sure we made it to the village of Ramsgill in Nidderdale, which was our meeting point at 9am. We just made it in spite of just about every vehicle making very slow progress around the country lanes close to the end of the journey. Unfortunately, there was no time to explore the village, one of the prettiest in Yorkshire apparently, as we took two cars back down the valley to Pateley Bridge, the start of the Nidderdale Way and our three day walk.

The first section is a lovely walk along the river through fields and woods adjacent to the river and in many parts, you can see the remains of a railway track, which was built to support the building of three dams in Upper Nidderdale. Just after the village of Wath we come across the first of these reservoirs called Gouthwaite – pronounced GOW by me but GOO by Chris, one of our walkers, who is a local so GOO it is. We continue up the eastern side of this pretty valley through a couple of small settlements until we reach Lofthouse, one of the larger settlements in the upper parts of the valley with another great Yorkshire name.

We continue north and then there is a section along the river, which is completely dry. The reason for this is that the ground is limestone, and the river goes underground and only resurfaces just before Lofthouse. It is also dictated by the level of discharge from the next reservoir up the valley.

After a wet lunch, huddled under trees by the dry riverbed, there is a steep climb from Limley Farm up the valley side followed by a good few miles along a track which follows the valley as it curves around into a westerly direction as we continue further up into upper Nidderdale. This ends at the dam and causeway at the bottom of the second reservoir, Scar House. Its an impressive structure with a huge drop to the valley below.

We cross the dam and then it is another short sharp climb up the other side and it’s a stony track all the way over In Moor to Middlesmoor. Another Nidderdale village, but with a commanding view back down the valley and a lovely church, which is generally visible from much of the valley but not today with the cloud so low.

We then descend to How Stean Beck, a tributary of the Nidd, which has created an impressive gorge through the limestone in the valley bottom. From here it’s fields back to Ramsgill to recover two of the cars to takes us back to Pateley Bridge and then the long journey home.

A lovely walk if I may say so. A beautiful valley when the weather is good in a relatively unknown part of Yorkshire.

For more photos please see the Walks Database.