Adventures in wet boots

Set out from Horton-in-Ribblesdale for a proper limestone country yomp this morning. The high point *cough* was to be Pen-y-Ghent (694 metres/2277 feet) towering over the village, but I was going the long way round.
I passed the Pen-y-ghent Cafe, crossed over and followed the Pennine Way for a while, climbing up a stony bridleway between limestone walls, heading north west towards Horton Scar.The way climbed steadily between green fields dotted with Swaledale sheep, brown cows and frisky rabbits, winding around the side of a dry valley before passing the outcrops of Horton Scar on the left. I got a bit camera happy on this walk.  
After a mile and a half or so of steady trogging I took a detour and crossed a stile off to the right at a junction of paths, sticking with the Pennine Way towards Pen-y-Ghent a little way in order to visit Hunt Pot which was hiding in a crinkle a bit further up the fell. Its bigger than it looks and I made damn sure I wasn’t going to slip down it. A nosy sheep got into the shot here.

Considering the detour to be well worth the ascent I returned to the stile and followed the path to the right signposted Foxup. After a short distance the path reached the lip of Hull Pot, which is ginormous - 300 feet from end to end, 70 across and around 70 feet straight down. I paused to watch a stoat hunting among the rocks on the other side of the chasm before following the edge of the pothole to the right, clambering over a stile and out across Horton Moor. The path climbed soggily but steadily to the corner of a wall before undulating alongside it over the moor towards the watershed where Ribblesdale meets Littondale, Pen-y-Ghent Side looming overhead to the right. This stretch was lonely and wild, feeling utterly remote. Great stuff.

After passing the headwaters of Foxup Beck and through some limestone outcrops, a fingerpost indicated a faint soggy path up the side of Foxup Moor towards Plover Hill. This was the strenuous bit - some seven hundred feet of ascent straight up the side of the fell, winding through the limestone edge with only a little scrambling needed followed by a steady pull alongside a stone wall to the summit plateau of Plover Hill, which is 680 metres high (2231 feet). An untidy little cairn suggests the top, but its flat and boggy on the top - so the high point is the ladder stile.   There were some great long distance views from the broad ridge, back west towards Ingleborough and Whernside and east into Silverdale and Littondale, the hump of Pen-y-Ghent itself beckoning at the other end of the ridge. I followed the wall along the ridge as it dropped steadily towards a saddle, the going was soft and peaty underfoot but not too bad - in November this would have been a proper bog-trot. I crossed another ladder stile at the saddle before starting the final trudge back up to Pen-y-Ghent itself.

A steady fifteen minutes trogging saw me at the top of the hill next to the trig point, sat on a bench scoffing butties. A brief pause to let em go down while I soaked up the breathtaking views later I was headed off down the steep end of Pen-y-Ghent.

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And steep it is. The ‘direct’ route passes through a couple of layers of rock, requiring some degree of easy scrambling in either direction. The path here had been reinforced/remanufactured, presumably to reduce erosion and the number of folk barming theirselves falling, progress down the flank of the hill was rapid. I paused at a gate for a look back at what I’d just clambered down and the fells across the valley.
The path followed a wall down and across the side of the fell through Brackenbottom Scar, requiring a little more scrambling, and on down to Brackenbottom Farm before a lane through a wooded glen led back to Horton-in-Ribblesdale. Best hike so far, hands down. 

Tags: Hikes