Ilkley to Burnsall: 13 miles, 988 feet of ascent

For the next two days, I am walking the first section of the Dales Way, a long trail through the Yorkshire Dales. I ended up including this leg because I had a four day hike with siblings and a ten day hike on Lady Anne’s Way, with one rest day in the middle, and I still had a few days to make a full three weeks. I could have spent some time in one place along the trails, or picked a city in England I haven’t spent time in, or even gone back to London and spent a few days digging deeper there. But I have the walker’s bug bad; I saw those days and thought ‘hmm, I am sure I can find a nice little two day walk to fill in the gap.’

I walked a similar trail, the Dales High Way, in 2019 after walking Hadrian’s Wall with my siblings, but that one focuses on hitting the three peaks of the Yorkshire Dales, whereas the main way is a bit more gentle. Gentle, as today showed me, is good. Very good indeed.

But lest you think gentle means flat and easy, here’s the elevation from the Dales Way walking guide, torn-out pages of which will be my trail directions for the next two days (I tore out hte pages because carrying the whole book is unwieldy).

The climb is gentle because much of the time the path lingers close to the river Wharfe (and yes, every time I say it I hear Worf and try to imagine the Star Trek Next Generation episode in which Worf hikes the dales…), rolling up and down gently as does the countryside as it rises into the dales.

At breakfast, I got to chatting with the only other person staying at my B&B, Mark. I knew right away he was a walker. (“If your ‘going to breakfast’ outfit includes shorts with a dozen pockets and hiking boots, you might be a walker.”) He’s done a lot of walking, and knows this area well. He is also walking to Burnsall today, also booked through the hiking company Contours, and somehow he ended up with a room in Burnsall at the Red Lion, the pub that marks the end of day one, while I would be picked up by a taxi at the Red Lion and driven to nearby-ish Linton. Mark and I exchange the usual walker chatter (comparing walks, recommending good ones – he says the Thames Path is really quite good, note to self – and talking about the chances of rain) and then I set off while he finished his breakfast. The rolling, rising hills were calling.

But first you have to get out of Ilkley. Let me dispel you assumption that Ilkley is some tiny village. It’s a big market town, large enough to take some work to get out of. One striking thing is how the divide between built and managed landscape and rough wild is not so strict here. Even in Ilkley, as I walked along the river, it went from domesticated footpath for dogwalking to muddy up and down while still really within town.

(note- I went a bit wild with taking photos, so do take the time to look at all the photos in the slideshows)

The path took me past a golf course and a fitness center, where I could hear one of those drill sergeant types yelling at his class to push through this set of reps. That gave me a smile. I think I’ve got a better exercise program for the day. The path gently brushes the edges of Addingham, where I spent a good ten minutes walking through an adorable little housing development of old stone buildings (maybe 19th century workers’ cottages fancied up and given names like Greenage Close), then across a field to a churchyard.

The trail finally shed it’s town feeling, and for the rest of the morning, until reaching Bolton Priory, I’d be in fields and woods never really out of sight of the river.

At a certain point, I found myself singing (I can’t help it; when I walk alone every so often snatches of tune will spring forth), and, having seen the Oliver! revival in London, I was pulling out songs from that show. Quite content. Then I came to a gate and a set of steps cut into the hill to get me down closer to the river again. Maybe thirty steps, which were wooden boards as uprights, with dirt flattened and packed in. This always slows me down, and here I realized that a party of seven men were catching up to me and had probably been treated to an impromptu concert carried back to them on the breeze. I soldiered on in hopes of getting ahead. After a few field and rising to cross a road, I realized they were going to pass me no matter what, so I paused and waited for them to catch up and pass me. They stopped just enough to say hello, with no acknowledgement of my crooning if they had in fact heard it, and off they went. I would see them ahead of me all day. They’d get out of sight, then they must have taken breaks because I would see them ahead in the distance again and again.

The rest of the morning, and in fact the whole day, was just an array of things you want from a ramble: rolling hills, beautiful little hidden groves of trees, interesting birds, ruins, some rough-cut steps to make me groan, sheep in fields.

It was also the Saturday at the tail end of an official school break week, so people were out in droves where the path meets a destination. I really saw this at Bolton Priory, an active church that is built right up against the ruins of a Medieval priory. This sits on the Bolton Abbey estate, which has an incredible set of trails along the river that are genuinely designed for families with kids, including fun slides and balance beams. In fact, the Dales Way for about four miles was mobbed with families.

After a while the traffic thinned out and we got back to dedicated walkers. And again, the trail delighted in new ways. The river is, of course, a magnet for birds, including geese and terns and a variety of ducks. And the season is right to see mothers and her young ones.

Because of the way trails weave across each other, I actually spent a bit of today on the same path I will walk again in a few days on Lady Anne’s Way, as the path came toward Appletreewick and, a mile beyond it, Burnsall.

I will be honest and say that for the last three miles or so, I was pretty tired. Thirteen miles is nothing to sneeze at, and especially when I haven’t walked that distance in probably a year (I’ve been training, but it’s been consistent seven and eight mile walks, not big longer ones).

And at Appletreewick, I re-entered the vacationers’ world, passing by a campsite that had glamping sites and places for just plain old tenting.

And finally, after a mile that was more complicated simply because so close to two towns the land is more broken up into smaller holdings, which means a lot of gates to get from field to field.

At last, I arrived at Burnsall, where hundreds of people were parked at the riverfront park grilling food and having a ball. And, with 90 minutes to kill before my taxi was scheduled to show up and whisk me away to my accommodation, I had a pint of cider at the Red Lion.

All in all, an auspicious start to the solo portion of my trip.