Walking Tours in united-kingdom

The Dales Way

*  Crossing the Pennines from Ilkley to Windermere

*  Walking Through Beautiful Wharfedale and Dentdale to the Lake District

*  Stay in Inns and Farmhouses Dating from the 16th and 17th Centuries

The Yorkshire Dales are an idyllic pastoral landscape of green valleys criss-crossed by dry-stone walls marking field boundaries. Picturesque villages and hamlets consisting of little more than a pub and post office abound. Old farmhouses and ‘stone barns’ dot the valley sides. Above the Dales are open rolling moorlands rising to 600m (2000 feet) or more. This tour includes the whole of the much loved Dales Way long distance path, which runs right across the Yorkshire Dales National Park and on to the shores of Windermere in the Lake District National Park.

The Dales Way, as its name suggests, is essentially a valley walk, traversing landscapes which are among those best-loved by the English themselves. Of course, for Yorkshire folk, there is absolutely nothing to compare with Yorkshire scenery, and one has to concede that they have a point. The hamlets and farmsteads of the Yorkshire Dales, with their dry-stone walls and outlying stone barns are, frankly, incomparable. If you walk nowhere else in England, walk here. You won’t regret it!

The route starts from the pleasant small town of Ilkley, overlooked by Ilkley Moor and where just upstream the River Wharfe emerges from Wharfedale. The Dales Way then follows the river past the medieval ruins of Bolton Abbey, along the Strid ravine and through the pretty villages of Burnsall, Grassington, Kettlewell and Buckden. You then climb over wild open moorland to reach the highest point of the route at Cam Fell (518m). Dentdale is quieter and more remote than Wharfedale; you pass through the pretty village of Dent with its cobbled streets and onto the market town of Sedbergh, nestling below the steep The Dales Way slopes of the Howgill Fells. For the last two days of the tour the trail crosses a delightful landscape of small sheep farms and the land becomes more rugged and the views more enticing as you enter the Lake District.

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