Today it was the start of my biggest challenge yet. To walk the Yorkshire Three Peaks. My alarm was set for 4.30am to arrive at Ribblehead station for a 7am start to meet up with the rest of the group. There was a bit of a chill in the air today so after wrapping up warm it was time for us to set off for our challenge. Our first target was Whernside so we made our way down past the Ribblehead Viaduct and followed the path along the railway line.
After crossing the bridge across the railway we came to Force Gill waterfall.
From the waterfall, it was a steady ascent up the Whernside ridge. At this point, there was a lot of clouds around and it was quite cool and windy. Eventually, we reached the summit trig and after a couple of photo's we sat down in the shelter for a bite to eat. It was too cold to stay here for too long though so we quickly moved on.
 |
| Shake Hole |
From here we made our descent towards the little village of Chapel-le-Dale. Once through the village, we started our walk towards our next summit, Ingleborough.
The weather was starting to improve by this point and it was a lot clearer on the summit of Ingleborough with quite a bit of blue sky about. We eventually came to a crossroads with a sign-post where our path joined with the Pennine Bridleway. From here we carried on our walk towards Horton-In-Ribblesdale.
 |
| Pen-y-Ghent in the distance |
 |
| Looking back the way we came on the path to Pen-y-Ghent |
After passing through the village we carried on along our route before eventually picking up the Pennine Way, which was the start of our ascent to Pen-y-Ghent. There was a nice short scramble section going up here which I always enjoy. After completing our third and final summit of the day we'd decided to do a slight detour to take a look at Hull Pot. We obviously haven't had much rain as there was no water flowing down into it. It's quite fascinating when you look at the size of it to think that this has once been totally filled with water.
 |
| Hull Pot |
From Hull Pot, we cut across the moor to rejoin Pennine Way and walked towards High Birkwith, where we then joined the Ribble Way for a short stretch. We walked down past Nether Lodge and eventually came out on the B6479. It was then just a short road walk back to where we parked our cars at Ribblehead station. This walk was quite a challenge for me as I'm not used to doing a lot of miles in one day but I thoroughly enjoyed it and great company too.
25 miles and 5200 feet of ascent
No comments:
Post a Comment