Stainforth - 30th October 2011

Walk: 10:15am to 3pm  - 7.5 miles

We didn’t arrive in Settle until around 7:15pm last night as we couldn’t resist watching our beloved Rotherham Titans play at home to Bristol (rugby by the way) – and how gutted we would have been if we had missed it, a 44-6 win for the mighty Titans which puts us into 2^nd place, 1 point behind Bristol. 

We left Rotherham just before 5pm, and on the way up there was the odd spot of drizzle, however literally the second we arrived the heavens opened – just as we had to start unpacking the car from about 15m away from the cottage, and to make matters worse there was no spare parking near the cottage so we had to put the car in a public car-park and then walk 10 minutes or so in the ‘monsoon’ Hopefully not a sign of things to come. And to make our arrival a little more fraught – the heating in the cottage wasn’t working, however after about an hour the owner phoned us back and talked us through re-setting the boiler….phew, fleeces off.

So first full day – and luckily when I went for the Mail on Sunday and The Rugby Paper I noticed that there was a parking space, so quickly picked up the car and sneaked it between the van and Skoda on the cobbled street. All going well. We left the cottage at 10am after a leisurely morning just as we like, and set off up Constitution Hill with the very steep ascent up to Warrendale Knots and over and down to Attermire Scar, a walk we had done a few times but it never seems to get an easier. 

Just before the Scar we took the left turn north towards Victoria Cave – today we would make a point of walking up the slope to have a look in it, as we’d walked past it on a number of occasion on previous walks but never bothered going near the entrance. Although not a long path up to the cave, the rocks were quite slippy so a great deal of care was required. The cave didn’t disappoint.

Shortly after visiting the cave we came to the track that takes you either up to Jubilee Cave or down past Clay Pits Plantation, but we would head north across the field to pick up the track towards Upper Winskill, Half way along this path we took a seat on some rocks and had 15 or 20 minutes break with a few sandwiches, and a horrible cup of tea – we’ll stick with the cold drinks in future or get some soup for the flask.

We decided to pay another visit to the water falls at Catrigg Force as it had been very wet overnight so we expected a good torrent over the falls – as with Victoria Cave, it didn’t disappoint. We spent around 20 minutes at the falls, I tried sitting my camera on some rocks to take some photos on a slow shutter speed – I got the effect but as the rocks were on the floor I had no idea of what would be in the photos – and they weren’t that impressive, but the falls were. Oh for a tripod…

Now down the track towards Stainforth, another ‘bench break’ in the hamlet before we headed towards Langcliffe. On route we paid another visit to the famous Lime Kilns – just as impressive as the first time we visited, but this time only a fleeting visit as we passed through. We planned to head on the path above Langcliffe, but if I’m being honest I was getting a little leg weary and we decided to stick with the tarmac path back to Constitution Hill in Settle and back to the cottage.

A nice steady walk to start the week, it was overcast for  quite a bit of the walk with some brief breaks for a few rays of sun, but as often happens just as we were close to getting back to the cottage, the skies broke and whilst not wall to wall sunshine, it turned out quite pleasant. Roll on tomorrow.


More photos can be found here