Dales Way 1 Sunday 19th March

Dales Way 1

Sunday, 19th March

A few weeks ago, Sandra, a friend from Shropshire contacted me and out of the blue, asked if I would like to walk the Dales Way with her some time in March. The Dales Way is a long distance trail, for those who don't know, that runs from Ilkley near Leeds all the way to Bowness-on-Windermere almost on the west coast. Depending on what you are reading, the total distance is 82 (start sign), 84 (sign painted on a bench) or 79 miles (the guide book), so take your pick how long it actually is!

Well, we settled on a date to start and that day will be tomorrow, 20^th March. In the meantime, we had a planning session, working out how far we would walk each day and how we would manage the vehicles. The plan is that we will both have a vehicle – mine would be the large and somewhat cumbersome motorhome (no power assisted steering makes it very heavy and unwieldy to drive) and hers would be a much smaller single person camper. We would set off each day with both vehicles, drive to the point where we were to finish walking for the day, then drive back to the start in the other vehicle. We booked campsites – some with facilities, some without, but being without facilities would not be the end of the world, as my van contains a bathroom of sorts – a toilet and shower at any rate. Unfortunately, some sites were not available and so we booked one site for the first night, a second site for the next three nights, then another for the following four nights and a final site for the final night. That of course meant that driving to the end of each day’s walk got further and further from the campsite – and, of course, the long drive back at the end of the day. It wasn’t ideal, but we could manage!

So the day finally arrived (today) that we would both drive to Ilkley where the walk stars arriving about 5-ish.

I was relying on my satnav. My old satnav was quite sensible. If you asked it to take you the shortest way, it might take you through industrial estates and tiny lanes, but if you asked it to take you the fastest way, it stuck to sensible roads. Not so my current device! It really needs to learn that just because a road cuts off a corner to save a nano second does not mean we should use that way. It also needs to learn that just because a road is labelled ‘60mph’ does not actually mean it is possible to travel at 60 all the way along it!

Anyway, I set off. To start with, everything was fine – motorway and major A roads. But then just before Harrogate, at Killinghall, it sent me along a much smaller road and off along the A59. Sounds pretty good, but it takes you over Blubberhouses Moor, which is steep and narrow. Eventually, I arrived at Swinsty and the satnav said to turn left. I looked at the road (if it could be called a road) to the left and thought, ‘What? Up there!?’ But I did as I was told (I’m pretty obedient really, even to a machine) and turned left up one of the steepest little roads imaginable – first gear job in the van! If that wasn’t enough, a bit further on, it told me to turn right – down a road that looked like the van wouldn’t even fit! And where did I end up? Back on a more major road that I would have been on had I continued straight instead of turning left by the reservoir! Grrr!

Finally arrived at the campsite about 5pm. This was one of those sites without facilities and there were only half a dozen pitches. The one at the far end was empty, so I presumed that that one was ours (it was). There was no-one about and the notice said to visit the house after 6pm. About 10 minutes later, Sandra arrived.

We decided while it was still just about light, that we would walk the mile or so into Ilkley to find the actual start of the walk. We knew it was somewhere along the river by a bridge, but there was more than one bridge – not that we knew that at first. We stood by the main bridge and were quite disconcerted to find no start sign. We had expected that something as popular as the Dales Way would have some indication of where the start was. We decided to walk back to the campsite along the river – and that was when we happened upon the other bridge – the ‘old’ town bridge – and there was the missing signage, saying ‘Dales Way 82 miles’ and pointing helpfully down a narrow track heading west. There was a good deal of street parking available near the path so we decided we would park there when we started tomorrow morning.

On returning to the campsite, we paid our dues and turned in for an early night – so we could have an early start in the morning. Must have been the excitement of actually starting the walk, or maybe it was that I ate my tea shortly before going to bed, but whatever the reason, I didn’t actually get to sleep till 2am! Never mind, as the saying is, tomorrow is another day!

And the interesting thing about this venture was - we had decided to bring Storm along with us!