Over Christmas we have been to the north to spend a week with Ems in a cottage in the village of Wray on the border of the Yorkshire Dales in Lancashire. We spent some time relaxing, seeing around the area, enjoying some country walks and a couple of days on the Lancaster canal courtesy of Em's!
Wray is an interesting small village with a long history involving all sorts of trades including clog making using local alder wood, swilled basket making with local coppiced oak, hazel and willow, hat making, nail making, wood-turning to make bobbins, village carpentry, wheelwrights, quarrying and mining, cotton processing and small scale mixed farming. These are beautifully illustrated in a book published by David Kenyon entitled "
Wray and District Remembered, A Photographic History of the Life and Times of a Working Village" written by David Kenyon. This brings home the vast changes in village life over the last few centuries from when many villages were hives of activity with lots going on at a local level. Today the village has a shop and post office and one public house, the "George and Dragon", and apart from farming now mainly subsidised from public funds, the village exists as orbital accommodation to Lancaster and for tourists like ourselves enjoying the countryside of Bowland and the Yorkshire Dales National Park.
We did one circular walk from the village heading south over Wray bridge and the river Roeburn, then turning right on a minor road climbing to an old mill building and cottages (all now renovated) above the river.
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| A winter scene of the river Roeburn from Wray bridge. This bridge wasn't destroyed in the major flood in August 1967 when several houses in the village were destroyed. |
The paths we followed are described as part of the three rivers walk in a booklet by Paul Hannon on Lunesdale walks; the three rivers are Roeburn, Hindburn and Wenning. The route then heads northeast across grassland to find a short holloway that drops down to a bridge over Pike gill that leads into the woods.
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| The old stream ford and holloway taken from the bridge over Pike gill. |
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| Descending through the wood to Hindburn bridge. |
The path in the woods had become a stream because of the rain during the night so the descent to the road and Hindburn bridge was a slippery affair.
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| River Hindburn taken from the bridge below Pike Gill Wood. |
The next section of the walk goes in a roughly northerly direction to the farms at Mealbank (typically I'm afraid, the path direction signs are largely missing through the farms so you need a map to figure out the route). At the last farm (Mealbank farm) the route goes through the farm to find a style on the field boundary to the northeast and then along a broad ridge giving views over the river Hindburn (now a grander affair after it's confluence with the Roeburn). Even though the elevation is only about 80 m, there are good views over the river and across to Wray and Hornby. The route then descends to the road by a style through the hedgerow and crosses the river Hindburn back into Wray.
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| The river Hindburn on our route back into Wray village. The path descends from the ridge just visible on the left of the photo. |
The other circular walk heads in the other direction to the north of Wray to the village of Hornby. We did this on a cold and frosty morning so it wasn't so muddy as the ground had frozen overnight. Starting from the village we followed the Hornby road to find Lane Head/ Kiln Lane on the right and then Back Lane bearing off to the left (WSW) to meet the road into Hornby. Here we had a coffee at the community café, the locals telling us that the Hornby Castle grounds is only open in February to view the snowdrop display and at some other time they couldn't recall.
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| The weir on the river Wenning looking over to Hornby castle. |
We continued our walk by taking the river path to the east near the Post Office. The path bifurcates with one going uphill into the woods and the other remaining on low ground nearer to the river. This passes close to the river Hindburg and then eventually joins Kiln Lane back into Wray. Our preferred path that follows the river to Wray bridge was closed.
We also did a two day trip on the Lancaster canal from south of Lancaster (near Stodday) to an area near Carnforth, about 10 miles, passing through the Lune aqueduct (bridge 107), and the swing bridge north of Hest Bank (bridge 120).
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| Hest swing bridge. |
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| A view from the boat over the Lune estuary to the mountains of southern Cumbria. |
We didn't meet many other boats on the trip as we passed though urban areas and Lancashire countryside. We stopped at Hest Bank and Carnforth for meals and enjoyed sunsets from the canal on our walks back to the start. Luckily there was no wind and it was ideal for photos of reflections on the canal surface as the sun lowered.
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| Haw thorn trees reflecting on the calm waters of the canal near Carnforth. |
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| River Lune from Ruskin's viewpoint in Kirkby Londsdale. |
We finished the break with a visit to the nearby village of Kirkby Lonsdale slightly to the north of Wray. This proved very busy with visitors enjoying the crisp winter's air and walking a popular track from the "Devil's Bridge" (dating from the 14 th century and now closed to vehicles) along the side of the River Lune to Ruskin's viewpoint returning into the village near the church. Turner's painting : "Ruskin's View" was painted from St Mary's Churchyard nearby. After a warming coffee in the village we returned to Wray before departing home.
