Ingleton to
Cold Cotes
circular
18th February 2025
6.0 miles / 9.7 km
164 m ascent
Easy
6.8 Naismith miles
Ingleton to
Step by Step | OS Map | Downloads | Gallery | Fly through
Picking a walking route during the winter presents challenges that don’t apply during the summer: Travelling time to the start of the walk eats into the available daylight, and so shorter more local routes are particularly attractive.
This week’s walk fits that description . . . but that sells it short: This compact route right on our doorstep offers great views, has a cafe on the route, visits a couple of idyllic dales villages, and has opportunities to either extend the route up onto the slopes of Ingleborough or onward into Ingleton. You could also shorten it in a couple of places if time is pressing.
The only downside is that you need to like stiles for this one – there are plenty of them.
Step-by-Step
We start at a road junction on the A65, where Green Lane meets the main road. This is just to the east of Ingleton. If you are travelling from Ingleton look for the entrance to the Greenwood Leghe caravan site on the left, then turn right 600m later and park on the layby at the side of the minor road. If you are travelling from Clapham pass the Goat Gap café on the right, then turn left after 800m and park. If you are using satnav to get to the start, then try Green Lane Ingleton as an address, but be aware that the best parking is on the un-named lane on the opposite side of the A65. The postcode LA6 3JD serves this area, but covers a lot of ground, so if you device uses what-3-words tags, try kitten.lakeside.wake for a more precise location. Paper map users, need to use the OS grid reference SD70127127.
We start out by crossing the A65 – visibility is good here, but care is still needed, we then head right for just 30m to find Green Lane on the left. We walk up Green Lane for 200m or so until we get to the rear entrance to the Greenwood Leghe caravan park, and look for a stile opposite on the right hand side of the road – this takes us onto a public footpath heading southeast approximately parallel with the A65. The path through the field is clear, and after the next stile, and ramshackle footbridge, you may notice a second public footpath crossing ours – this runs from Whinney Mire and the A65 up to a point on green lane that we pass later in the day.
As we walk across this field, we notice a very clear trace of a disused structure, which it is tempting to interpret as a disused railway line. There was once a railway in this area, but that’s on the other side of the A65, and this is far too narrow to have been a standard gauge line anyway, so it remains unclear what this structure was. Ingleton did have a coal mining industry until 1936, so it’s possible that this was a tramway for coal tubs – If anyone knows otherwise, drop us a line via the Contact Us link.
Our next landmark is an attractive barn, with the path passing to the left of the building and then heading to a pinch point in the walls of the fields where we take a gate into open pasture and see a somewhat dilapidated wooden footbridge ahead.
We cross the bridge (over Cold Cotes Beck) and climb up to a metalled road ahead where we see a dwelling – we are now at Cold Cotes Waste, where we walk past the building and then just 50m later see the footpath continuing on the right. The next section of the walk loops through Goat Gap and Newby before climbing to Cold Cotes, which is just 500m further up the lane from Cold Cotes Waste, so if you are short of time, this is a viable shortcut.
As we scale the stile just beyond the dwelling, we look slightly to the right and see the A65 and Goat Gap. Our path now heads toward Goat Gap through several fields each with a stile, eventually bringing us to a farm where the path marked on the OS map is to the right of a barn and through the farmyard. There is a notice on the gate advising that there is a diversion to the left of the barn, so follow the drystone wall for 20m or so to find the stile and take that safer route.
We now see a derelict barn ahead and we head toward it. As we arrive, we find the rusted remains of the axle of an old Ford with wire wheels adding to the atmosphere of decay, and at this point we head slightly left up to a metal gate. Once through that gate we go right and follow the field edge for a while.
We pass Ryecroft farm below us to our right, and then as we approach the A65 see the Goat Gap Café, which is in fact at Newby not Goat Gap. We are about halfway round the walk now, so if you fancy coffee and cake, that’s enough of a reason to take a break here.
The footpath arrives at a small, metalled road close to the café – go right to have a brew or left if you are pressing on with the walk. We are now entering Newby, a rather attractive village that seems to have escaped “honeypot” status by some miracle.
We walk up the main street through the village and look for the Methodist Chapel on the left. The chapel was built in 1873 by villagers and local farmers, when the congregation became too large to meet in houses. It was enlarged in 1900, which enabled the Sunday School to begin.
We follow the track round the front of the chapel and then bear left following way markers to find a green lane between drystone walls. We are now running parallel to our outbound path, just a little higher up the lower slopes of Ingleborough Common and Newby Moss. We stay within the confines of the green lane for about 300m, enjoying views across the A65 toward Bentham on our left, and toward Ingleborough on our right.
At the end of the lane, we cross into open fields again and continue to head northwest and on toward Cold Cotes.
We cross a small beck – Goat Gap Sike – and then after two more fields, our path forks. It really does not matter which option you take as both lead to Cold Cotes. We took the clearer option to the right which brings us to the top end of the hamlet – if you take the left hand fork, you enter slightly further south, but either way, we head right along the minor road. If you took the short cut from Cold Cotes Waste, then welcome back.
We pass an attractive farmhouse with a distinctive sundial set in the front wall, then look for a path on the left of the road just 20m later.
We are now on a public footpath that crosses a number of fields as we work our way up to the “old road” from Clapham to Ingleton. Eagle eyed users of our website will note that the route we recorded varies a little from the “official” path marked on the OS map. To some extent this is simply because the well-trodden path on the ground varies, but later on we took a deliberate choice to head up to the old road earlier than the path to avoid active slurry spreading in the last field. Once at the old road, we head left toward Ingleton. This is not a busy road, but farm traffic does use it, so take care.
We stay on the old road for about 700m, passing a farm at Duck Dub, and soon after that, a striking building named Holly Platt. Parts of this grade II listed building date back to the 17th century, although much of what we see now is a 19th century modernisation. It is thought that Holly Platt was a posting inn before the construction of the Keighley-Kendal turnpike – which eventually became the A65.
Just 100m after Holly Platt, we see another farm on our right – this is Slatenber, and 50m beyond this we find a path crossing the old road. The path on the right heads up to the Pennine Journey path up Ingleborough. It’s a path Bentham Footpath Group have used before – although we were coming the other way on our Ingleton circular via Fell Lane walk.
We go left here and down toward Green Lane, but those craving a longer route could go right and take our Fell Lane walk in the opposite direction to take a route into Ingleton and then back to Green Lane.
We now head downhill across the field toward a stile which happens to be next to a pond – this can be trick in wet conditions, and if you find it impassible, simply head back up to the New Road and continue until the next road on the left – Green Lane. Assuming the stile is passible – which it generally will be, then cross and continue onward to the stile giving access to Green Lane.
We could stay on Green Land as far as the A65 – and if you are short of time, this is a useful shortcut. But road walking is a little dull, so we opted to take a stile on the right 100m later to head North toward Yarlsber. A quick glance at the OS map shows us again straying from the official line of the public footpath 300m later. This is because the “correct” path goes into Yarlsber then comes back out though the same field – we simply removed two sides of that triangle to take the path down to the caravan park at Greenwood Leghe.
The footpath enters the caravan park, and we head right, then almost immediately left before following the path round the back of the caravans along a dedicated path until we meet the broad access road that connects the park beck to Green Lane. Once at Green Lane we head right and just 200m later we are back at the A65 with the cars visible opposite.
