Sunday 18 January 2015

Ilkley & Grass Wood

Miles this Week 11.41
Miles this Month 37.2
Miles this Year 37.2

A bad week for walking as the weather closed in and ice and snow dominated the weekend, meaning we did not get out of the house on this particular Sunday.

Middleton & Denton - 6.52 miles

Thanks to Paul Hannon and his "Ilkley Moor" guide for this walk which is actually on the opposite side of the valley to Ilkley Moor.

The walk starts from the riverside in Ilkley where, on a damp Wednesday in January, there is plenty of parking. The first section of the walk goes through Riverside Gardens, past the rugby club, as far as the suspension bridge over the river Wharfe.
The next section can be slightly hairy as it requires moving along the busy road that runs alongside the river and which is an infamous "rat run" for those who know the area - beware speeding cars !!
Thankfully, this section is brief before cutting across fields and skirting the underside of West Park Wood, emerging onto Denton Lane and climbing to the hamlet.  This is the furthest point of the walk, which is (in reality) triangular in shape. A few more yards uphill takes you across the top side of West Park Wood and out along some very wet fields past the former Middleton Hospital and heads towards Middleton Moor, although before reaching this you turn to begin the descent through Middleton Woods and back to the rugby club before regaining the river bank for the last few metres.
A delightful walk which combined both the river, woodland and moorland, although it does have to be said that it was fairly tough going through the fields on the moor edge which were absolutely saturated.

Grass Wood - 4.89 miles

Grassington is one of those "special" places which has featured throughout my life - I first played rugby at "Upper Wharfedale" (as it was in those days) when I was in my teens and even when living in the South-East a return visit to Yorkshire would, inevitably, mean a visit to this Capital of Wharfedale.
The weather was particularly inclement for this walk. In fact had the photo opposite been taken some 5 minutes earlier it would have been completely white !! Such is the English weather that we started in a blizzard, enjoyed bright blue skies in the middle section of the walk and returned to grey and overcast weather before driving home in thick snow !!
This is a simple route following the river Wharfe upstream from Grassington - we parked in the National Parks Car Park which is not cheap but very convenient for many walks. The walk passes through Lower Grass Wood before hitting the road from Grassington to Coniston. A few yards of road walking (without the threat of speeding traffic [see above]) meets the far corner of the wood and a pleasant path leads upwards (quite steep in places) and across the woods, leading back to Grassington.

Our 1000 mile challenge is now well behind schedule - we should have walked approximately 50 miles by this point in the month. However, as previously stated we are confident that we will make up any defecit later in the year.

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