Yorkshire Dales

Train to Wennington – walk back to Bentham

Easy

5.4 miles | 8.8 km | 219 m Ascent | 6.5 Naismith miles | Kate Rowe / Kate Butcher
All of the towns and villages in our area are attractive places to live, and just about all of them make a good starting point for a walk. One of the ways in which Bentham stands head and shoulders above the others however is that it has a railway station, making walks based on a combination of rail travel and walking between stations particularly attractive.
This excellent walk draws on that strength: We take the train from Bentham just one stop to Wennington, then take a route back that gives us great views of Ingleborough and Tatham Fells along the way.
Being lucky with the weather always helps make a walk seem particularly attractive, and as the pictures show, we were indeed fortuitous this time, enjoying bright sunshine and early signs of spring.

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Rathmell

Easy

5.3 miles | 8.5 km | 147 m Ascent | 6.0 Naismith miles | Peter Lennard
In July 2024, we enjoyed a great walk from Rathmell up to Whelp Stone Crag, and that walk impressed on us that walking in and around Rathmell had a number of attractions:
The area is much less busy than the “honeypot” villages within the national park, and there are great views across the Ribble Valley to Settle and Langcliffe with Pen-y-Ghent in the distance. Add to this convenient parking and a short travel distance from Bentham, and Rathmell clearly has much to offer.
It’s also an attractive village in its own right with some interesting history. The walk includes an ancient packhorse bridge that would not be out of place on any Yorkshire Dales calendar, and toward the end we get to see llamas and alpacas.

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Melling circular via the rivers Lune and Greta, Wrayton and Wennington

Easy

5.9 miles | 9.5 km | 173 m Ascent | 6.8 Naismith miles | Mary Taylor
Over the last couple of walks, we have started to see the first signs of spring – with snowdrops, daffodils, and hazel catkins starting to emerge. The optimistic feeling that the winter might be releasing its grip was confirmed on this excellent local walk: We enjoyed brilliant sunshine as we walked from Melling over to Wrayton, and then on to the banks of the river Greta, following it down to its confluence with the Lune.
The original intention was to continue down the Lune and loop back to Melling via farm lanes. However, the recent rains made this route impassible, so our ever-resourceful leader provided an alternate route back: We returned to Wrayton as per the outbound walk, then took a path over the hill by Catgill Barn and down to the edge of Wennington Hall. A brief stretch on the road then took us to Lodge farm where we took a path that over the top of the Melling railway tunnel indulging in some industrial archaeology and then back into Melling.

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Ingleton to Cold Cotes circular

Easy

6.0 miles | 9.7 km | 164m Ascent | 6.8 Naismith miles | Don Cartledge
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.

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Ellerside from Cartmel

Easy

7.4 miles | 11.9 km | 203 m Ascent | 8.4 Naismith miles | Alison Kinder & Colin Stroud
Bentham Footpath Group has visited the Cartmel Peninsula a number of times: It’s a great place to start a walk and offers a good choice of routes. We could head east onto Hampsfell with cracking views over the Kent Estuary and into Morecambe Bay, or as we do on this walk, west onto the ridge at Ellerside with equally good views across the Levens Estuary and over to the Lakeland fells. Along the way we have the opportunity to explore Cartmel Village, potentially adding a visit to the Priory and Cartmel Park racecourse, before heading through Park Wood, and scaling Ellerside where from the top of a ridge running along the side of the estuary, we have great views over to Ulverston. Our return is south past How Barrow, then down to Low Bank Side where we pick up a lane back to the racecourse tracking the river Eea.

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Lancaster – City country and coast

Moderate

7.5 miles | 12.1 km | 139 m Ascent | 8.2 Naismith miles | Sandra Craggs
A couple of years ago, we tried an interesting experiment – we started a walk in the centre of Lancaster and included a significant rural element in our route. That walk was a great success, and with a little time having passed we thought it worth re-running with a few minor changes to the points of interest we visit in the city centre.
Starting from Sugar House Alley, we walk through the city centre to the Lancaster Canal where we head South along the towpath – this gives a very urban view of Lancaster and its industrial heritage.
We leave the canal just after the west coast main line railway bridge, and head down a side street into the Fairfield Association Nature Reserve. That trail brings us back to the canal at Haverbreaks, and we again head South before leaving almost immediately to take a path through Aldcliffe to the Lune estuary where we take the embankment North through the marshes. Opposite Oxcliffe Hill, we head inland through Freemans Wood and on to Abrahams Heights. We are now back in a very urban environment, heading past the bustle of the railway station and then the Priory and Castle, before returning to the city centre, where we visit more heritage sites.

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Longridge Fell from Hurst Green

Easy

7.4 miles | 11.9 km | 267 m Ascent | 8.7 Naismith miles | Kate Rowe / Kate Butcher
Just one week on from a walk where the weather worked against us, we have a little more luck: This walk, like last week’s offers great views, but this time we got to enjoy them, along with interesting diversions on the way round. These include Cromwell’s bridge (which we drive past just before the start of the walk), the Shireburn alms-houses, The Ribble Jubilee Trail, Greengore – a buttressed hunting lodge once used by Henry VII, the fell top forestry path at Longridge Fell, a lunch break with jaw dropping views over to Parlick and Fair Snape Fell, Bleak House, sculptures of horses, the original site of the alms-houses – yes they were moved, and the manicured grounds of the famous Stonyhurst College. And as a bonus we got a free organ recital hearing the majesty of Widor’s Toccata. It’s only January, but this must be a candidate for best walk of the year.

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Bordley

Easy

7.2 miles | 11.7 km | 296 m Ascent | 8.7 Naismith miles | Sandra Craggs
We try very hard when we design our walks: We need to find starting points with suitable parking, and we need to find walks that offer a wide variety of interests on the way round. We need to think about where we can stop for breaks, and we need to think about whether changing conditions might make the route impassible – ideally, with an alternative if that’s the case. Finally, we like to offer great views – because that after all is such a big part of why we go walking in this wonderful landscape.
What we can’t do unfortunately is turn off the fog. So, today’s walk does have brilliant views . . . it’s just that they were hidden by mist and so don’t show on the pictures. Follow the route on a better day and we promise you there’s a lot to see.

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Into the heart of Three Peaks Country from Gearstones

Easy

6.8miles | 10.9 km | 279 m Ascent | 8.2 Naismith miles | Mary & Kate Taylor
January can be a great time of the year to go walking, but as we have seen over the last couple of weeks, snow and ice can make some routes inaccessible or unsafe. No such problems this week, and it’s great to get back to our published programme.
We start at Gearstones and then set out up the Cam Road on the Dales Way, as far as Cam End where we pick up the Pennine Bridleway which we follow down to the lovely Ling Gill bridge, and the nearby Ling Gill nature reserve. The bridleway contours around Cave Hill to High Birkwith, where we take the Ribble Way over to God’s Bridge, then Nether Lodge, before crossing Thorns Moss on the way back to Gearstones.

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Local Walk January 2025

Easy

5.2 miles | 8.4 km | 171 m Ascent | 6.1 Naismith miles | Sandra Craggs
The walk for January 9th was scheduled to be at Winster. However, prolonged freezing conditions made the minor roads in that area a significant black ice risk.
We therefore postponed that walk and substituted a local stroll in and around Bentham.
This is the second week in a row that icy conditions have triggered a change of plan, and just as last week, we see this as an opportunity rather than a problem: Bentham is a great place to live, and a great place to walk. The route we present here stands comparison with any of our more distant routes and reminds us how lucky we are to live here.

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