Grassington to Buckden, Buckden to Ribblehead, Dent

Like I said it was a little rainy on Monday morning when we set off from Grassington, stopping for cold tablets and a scone. It was mostly pretty easy walking, though we had a little difficulty with Mark’s watch triggering something on his phone that played music. He thought the music was coming from workers we could hear not too far away, but it turned out to be us. The guide book told us we’d be leaving the river valley and going up into the hills for good views. Though we’d be returning to the river after Kettlewell.

One of the first things we passed was an old lime kiln. I guess it’s the Old Pasture lime kiln, a documented point of interest on the Dales Way.

We continued on for the views.

We were looking forward to stopping in Kettlewell, even though we had found out the night before that sadly our favorite cafe there, &then Tasting Deli, would be closed since it was a Monday. Last time, I thought &then was a tie with The Bakewell in Askrigg for best bakery. We ended up sitting on the bench that was near the public toilets, but far enough away to be pleasant, and having a snack lunch, then pushing on.

After leaving Kettlewell, we were on a path between the sheep fields and the river.

And on the road into Buckden, this sign.

We stayed at the Buck Inn in Buckden, where last time I thought we had the best dinner. But in 2024, it was a Sunday and we had Sunday roast. This time I think we both had varieties of pie. Mine was vegetarian, and the filling was mostly potato, a bit bland but good when doused with the vegetarian gravy. Mark’s had chorizo in it, so I expect it was more savory. We didn’t have room for dessert. When we checked in we were reminded that breakfast was not until 8:30. One of the staff members warned us that our walk to Ribblehead the next day was going to be longer than the 10 miles guidebook said, maybe 15 miles, but another local sitting at the bar who seemed to bike a lot was positive it’d be closer to the promised 10.  

In the morning the big excitement was watching out our window to see the school bus drop offs and pick ups. It seemed like there was one bus for older kids that arrived and one kid got on, then another bus with younger kids arrived and the older kids got off that bus to switch to the first one, and then one younger kid who must’ve been sitting in the first bus, to stay out of the rain, no doubt, got off to switch to the younger kids bus. We went down for breakfast, served by the the guy who’d been scaring us about the length of our upcoming day’s walk, who must’ve been a heavy smoker because you could smell it on him. Breakfast was in an older part of the building, with wooden floors and stone doorways. I guess it’s an old stone Georgian Inn, meaning built sometime between 1714 and 1830. The food was perfectly adequate – not a star. The room as well. It was plain and spacious and perfectly adequate, not too many poorly chosen decorative elements.

We set off and got interested in wet spider webs.

It was a long, muddy slog from Buckden to Ribblehead. One of the problems we had was that Ribblehead’s not really a place, it’s train station next to the massive Ribblehead Viaduct, so it didn’t really show up on our maps. Plus we needed to leave the trail and walk another mile and a half or two miles along the road to get to our hotel, the Station Inn. An ancient stone inn, that was surprisingly cozy once we finally got there. 

The first few miles out of Buckden were pretty civilized, a rocky path along the river. We even saw a group of people going for cold early swims in the river. We passed another inn, the George, that looked much less inviting in the rain than it does on the website. Then we visited St Michael and All Angels Church in Hubbleholme, that’s evidently been there since the 12th century, although with much rebuilding and restoring, and was a favorite of the author J.B. Priestly. Dales Way continued up hill and around the back of the church. We were still by the river for a bit, but then pretty quickly were into muddy wet fields. We passed a group of three British women who were walking together, Wendy, Debbie, and Susan. We would catch up and be passed by them multiple times for the rest of the day. They had started from the George, a little over a mile further along the trail then the Buck Inn, where we started.

We came to two nice stopping places along Dales Way. The first was a house or cottage where they put out the tea things and a cooler of snacks with an honors system for payment, where you could sit and rest a minute. Unfortunately they were working on the floors in the cottage part so no bathrooms. The next one was more of a public building, with an actual kitchen and bathrooms with a suggested donation of 50p. I didn’t have any coins left so we took the last Fat Rascal (suggested donation £3) and I left a £5 note. In both places, the people left out real cups and dishes and silverware for walkers to use, with a bus tub to deposit any dirty dishes and cutlery. I can’t imagine Americans doing that; it’d all be paper and plastic.

The ladies met up with us at both stopping places. It was about 1:30 at the second place and we were figuring we had at least 4 hours to go so we best get moving. It was back into the marshy fields. There were a couple places where people had been working, one place where there was a crew working on the cell phone tower, and they had driven vehicles through, making the path harder to see and the ground more torn up. Eventually we climbed out of a field and crossed a road, and started climbing yet another steep and muddy hill, where what seemed to be the path kept turning out to be rivulets. And sometimes more like rivers. We got to some really rushing water that we really couldn’t get across, and decided to go back to the road. As we descended back to the road, the ladies made it to the gate to enter the field, saw us coming back, and decided to stick to the road, too. There were some serious climbs, but then it was pretty much all road to Gearstones where we had to leave Dales Way and walk about a mile along the B6255 or Blea Moor Rd to the Station Inn. There was one spot where the better path – to avoid walking on the busy highway – was through a farm, and we had to negotiate with a bull and a couple of cows to get across yet more water. But we made it.

Although, I did fall climbing up a gravelly rough place in the road. I whacked my bad right knee and was kind of worried I’d done serious damage, but thankfully after a night’s rest and application of Voltaran cream, it was OK in the morning.

Like I said the Station Inn was cosy. We had burgers for dinner – I had the vegetarian halloumi and mushroom burger and Mark had the smash burger. Both came with excellent chips/fries. Fried halloumi in various forms was a common vegetarian offering at all the places we stopped. There was live music after dinner,  kind of an Irish pick up band, but they started with two American songs – Buddy Holly, It Doesn’t Matter Anymore (tho I probably first heard it by Linda Ronstadt), and … damn I can’t remember who the second song was by now. I’ll fill it in when I remember. 

I didn’t take many pictures during the day, too rainy, but here’s the room, and the highly impressive adjacent Ribblehead Viaduct.   

In the morning we got up and headed for Dent. We had to start along the road and at Gearstones a woman in a black car pulled in and said she was looking for her daughter who was doing the walk on her own. The daughter’s phone had died because there hadn’t been enough sun during the long rainy day before to power her solar charger. After the road, the walk started off a little rough, with a really steep wet uphill, where I actually lost a boot. Temporarily. Then it was a lot of ups and downs and crossing water. With a lot of other people, who all seemed to be faster than us, including one guy walking his dog, who said he just followed the dog to find the right path. Eventually we came out on a rocky wet road and followed that awhile, and came to a place where there was a choice to stay on the road, slightly better paved at this point, or go back into the fields. We chose road and the mom looking for her daughter caught up with us there. At this point we were following the River Dee, into a place called Cowgill, where we met up with the daughter. Who was cracking along quite impressively, carrying all her stuff in a big frame pack, including the solar charger. With drying socks hanging off the back. There was another smaller viaduct, the Denthead or Cowgill viaduct.

Rushing water – here’s a link to the video. I thought I could maybe loop it and use it for falling asleep white noise.

After Cowgill, we walked on the river path as we were supposed to do, and went past a campground where someone was settling in for the night. The campground had bathrooms, but rather than trying to negotiate what the fee might be for us to just use the bathroom, if it was £7 for your campground including bathrooms, we opted for the bushes. And when we came to the next choice of road or fields, we opted for road. 

And pretty soon, only a couple miles from Dent, we met up with our ladies. In the morning, when we were struggling with the muddy hill, we wondered if they had found an easier alternate route, but it turned out that they had taken the train from Ribblehead to Dent, a roughly 15-minute ride, which meant getting to be on the train over the viaduct, and then did some walks away from Dent on the road. It was their last day and they had been worn out enough by the slog from the George Inn to Ribblehead, so opted for an easier day. 

Walking the roads got us into Dent earlier than the B&B check in time. The ladies told us that the coffee at the local heritage center was good, and a local who Mark asked confirmed it, so we went there and sat and had cakes and coffee for a bit. Right before the heritage center there was a public toilet so that made things easier – no embarrassing asking where are the toilets as soon as we walked in. It was a pretty standard small town little museum with trains and dioramas and exhibits about famous dead residents.

Our B&B in Dent was the George and Dragon.

The George and Dragon was pretty lively in the evening. They were going to put us in the lower dining room where we would have breakfast the next morning, but it seemed kind of cold and remote down there so we we asked to be seated in the upper room with everyone else. I had a green bean and cauliflower curry that was quite nice. Mark had pizza. Our ladies were there and one of them had gotten the pizza gluten free and said it was quite good. The G&D had their Halloween decorations up, lots of spiders and witches. Our waiter was pretty young, mouthful of braces, and by the time we got cleared and were even thinking about dessert, the kitchen had closed so we couldn’t order anything anyhow.   

And here’s breakfast the next morning. There weren’t too many overnight guests, just one other table besides us, someone who was seeing Yorkshire by motorcycle, so the place seemed half closed. His friend had canceled breakfast, not wanting to start riding with a full stomach. Our breakfast was brought by a woman who also seemed to be doing the cleaning. We were scheduled to walk from Dent to Beck Foot, by way of Sedburgh, “England’s Book Town”. There wasn’t anyplace to stay in Beck Foot, though so we were going to be picked up by a taxi and taken back to Sedburgh for the night. The following morning we would be transported back to Beck Foot to start walking. We decided to just walk Sedburgh, so while I was sitting with that plate of beans and eggs, I called and cancelled the taxi. It was a pleasant walk to Sedburgh, and I’ll tell you about that and the last three days of the walk next time.