Walk: 11am to 3:30pm - 7 miles and 850ft of ascent
Reading the title of this walk you might think it relates to a walk around Malham Tarn itself, but it doesn't - although that in itself would be a nice walk around England's highest lake. If I'm being honest I just couldn't think of a name for the walk, but as it included part of the northern end of the Tarn I went with it to save wasting more brain cells as I get even closer to that ripe old age of 50 - ok 13 months to go but best to start saving them now.
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| View over Malham Tarn from the northern edge |
It's only a relatively short drive to Malham Tarn from Settle, about 5 or 6 miles along a narrow windy road - thankfully today not too much traffic on the road so no nasty surprises when you go round a bend and find another vehicle coming straight for you and panic sets in. Within 20 minutes or so we were parked up not too far from the Field Centre to the north of the Tarn and ready to walk. The weather was fine with plenty of sun around so we set off without our jackets on.
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| The farm we couldn't find on the map |
We followed the path that took us along the northern edge of Tarn Moss and then the Tarn itself until we reached the end of the wooded area where we picked up a path in a north-easterly direction towards Middle House farm. A short stretch uphill and over the fell for roughly 1/2 mile. Although nothing major, we did become a little confused at one point as we came to a farm that wasn't on the map, but couldn't see the buildings that were on the map. Having found the path we needed to take it looks like the farm highlighted on the map is now derelict, but the occupied one with the dog outside and the 'no right of way' sign doesn't appear on it.
Anyway we headed over the pastures towards Darnbrook House - we were now at about 1500ft but the walking was easy, if a little muddy in patches. We stopped near some limestone outcrops to don our waterproof gear as the heavens opened - at least this time we were prepared unlike yesterday when we were caught out and trying to pull our gear out of our rucksacks and get it on as quickly as possible when the rain was coming horizontally at us. As we dropped down the hill towards Darnbrook, we lost the path again but could see our destination so not a problem walking down the hill and ensuring that we didn't get lost. That would have been too hard even for us :)
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| The Clapper Bridge at Cowside Beck |
Cowside Back would be our lunch spot - a nice little wooden bridge over one fork of the beck, and a Clapper Bridge over the other fork - we last saw a Clapper Bridge when on a walk in the Dales 2 months ago so having never seen them previously, a little like waiting for a bus :) We had a lovely little lunch with sandwiches, soup and bread and a few other energy giving goodies. After 20-30 minutes we were ready to continue our walk.
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| These sheep had all just been dipped |
We headed over the field to Darnbrook House and then took the small road south-west towards Tennant Gill - the plan was to detour up the fell but not long after heading up the hill we noticed some Longhorn Cattle near the road so headed back down to get closer to them. We'd read that on this route there was a chance of running into them, but were really pleased that our luck was in - our only experience of Longhorn has been eating them in the USA - but we kept that to ourselves when taking photos of them.
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| Longhorn |
We continued along the road planning to pick up the Pennine Way south over the fell towards Waterhouses, but as the rain kept coming and going we decided to stay on the road all the way back to the car. A really enjoyable walk, and even though the last leg was along a small road the traffic was minimal and it was still really quiet as it was coming over the fells. We hardly saw anyone all day, a really relaxing walk.
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