Walking - Chapel le Dale - 26 Nov 2006

Sunday November 26th 2006

Members present: Aimee Chalmers,  Imogen Shepherd,  Kevin Francis,  Simon Ko

This was pretty good…

After leaving the the bunk house we hit our first problem. The Station Inn was still shut and we hadn't planned a proper route. Nevermind, we would just walk to the Hill Inn and think about it there. So off we marched into the cold mist, being splattered by light spots of rain. Within an hour we arrived at the pub, but to find it too was shut. Nevermind, further down the road was White Scar, we could spread the map out there. With one eye on the Northern Caves book I plotted a route talking us towards the chapel in Chapel-le-Dale and along a "dry" river bed to take us past some cave entrances. We saw plenty, and seemed to miss even more, according to the book! Soon the dry stream bed started getting wetter, after some fun looking moguls.

The God's Bridge I was expecting didn't appear (I later found out there are 3 God's Bridge's in the Dales!!!) but the resurgences it marked definitely did make themselves known! The River Doe quickly grew massive as we walked further alongside it towards the White Scar caves complex. We left the river at a field boundary and rejoined the road, making our way past the quarry, which looks a lot better when standing on the road as opposed to flying past in a car. You really get to appreciate how big it is. We also noticed that the humourous man drowning sign had been broken by some vandals…

We got to White Scar to find the café full of pensioners. This did not stop us from filling up on liquids and fry-ups! For some odd reason (it was a Sunday?) there were no scones or cakes. Knowing we still had 3 hours we walked up Ingleborough using the Tatham Wife route. Not wanting to climb too high we found a good level limestone pavement and followed the track in the direction of the viaduct we knew we were returning to. After some wall climbing incidents and following a gentle incline down we made it to Southerscales, where we decided to rejoin the main road as it was getting both dark and late. We got to the Station Inn for 5, where Si and I had the slowest game of pool ever. Kind of.

Next time I want to find the right God's Bridge, and on a sunny day after much less rain explore the cave entrances we found along the dryish river bed.