Paul Lydon: Walking on Pen-y-Ghent

With a typical August Bank Holiday Weekend wet weather forecast of rain, we decided to continue with our planned caving trip to the Yorkshire Dales anyway as we had postponed the trip already once from last week due to the weather.

So after a quick stop at the Orpheus CC hut to collect ropes and tackle bags, Karen and I set off for the Dales and arrived at our accommodation for the long weekend: Greenclose, the Northern Pennine Club's hut.

There was no one there as we arrived after a two hour journey at around 21:30 last night so we headed over to the New Inn in nearby Clapham to have a quick drink and collect the key.

We were up in the morning at 08:30 to find we still had the place to ourselves, surprisingly as it was the Bank Holiday weekend and after a bit of cereal we unloaded the caving gear from the car. We had agreed with Keith earlier, who we were to meet this morning in Bernies Cafe, to go walking today as it had been very wet recently, there were weather warnings of heavy rain for today and it had begun to rain.

We arrived at the café to find Keith already there and after breakfast and a quick trip next door to Inglesport, we drove to Horton in Ribblesdale and parked at the Pay and Display car park.

Next was a quick visit to the Pen-y-Ghent café to pick up some stuff for lunch, than back into the rain to follow the route of the Pennine Way as it heads south from the café through the village then along a rough track which brings to one of “The Three Peaks”, Pen-y-Ghent.

We walked along the track in the rain as it gradually increased in height and after passing through a gate made a short detour to have a look at the large and impressive hold formed by Hull Pot only a few hundred metres away.

As expected, the waterfall falling into the open pot, which looks as if is the remnant of an old collapsed chamber about 90 metres long by 30 metres wide, was flowing at quite a high rate due to the rain and there was a deep pool forming on the floor. It has been know to fill completely with enough heavy rain.

Returning to our previous route we again made a small diversion to have a look at Hunt Pot which isn't as large as Hull Pot but is still quite a spectacle, again with a waterfall plunging into its 70 metre depths.

After the caving interest, it was a return to plodding in the rain to head towards the top of Pen-y-Ghent which soon arrived after a gradually-rising and well-worn path led straight to the 'S'-shaped drystone-wall wind shelter.

We made use of the shelter to sit and have a bit of lunch admiring the odd peak through the cloud to the surrounding countryside.

Then it was time to descend.

We decided to follow the path dropping much more steeply down the south ridge again following the Pennine Way, which involved quite a lot of rough rocky steps until we arrived at a junction of paths with the Pennine Way continuing to the south while our route lay across grassy farm land to the village of Brackenbottom.

At Brackenbottom we walked along the small road to reach Horton in Ribblesdale again next to its ancient church, then very soon, back to Pen-y-Ghent café for some much deserved mugs of tea and cake.

The rain had finally stopped as we were back at the car and I discovered why my boots had felt strange all day: I had taken the footbeds out last weekend to allow the boots to dry thoroughly and had forgotten to replace them!