We had a few days in Lancaster visiting Em and joining Bex, Sam and Esmee to move Emily's canal boat and visit the dales.
Our first trip was to Clapham village we reached by taking the Northern Line train to Leeds from Morecambe stopping at Lancaster and varies stations along the route including Clapham and Skipton. The station at Clapham is about a twenty minute walk from village but on a pavement alongside a quiet road. We left the road to take "The Green Track" alongside Clapham Beck to reach the centre of the village and a café, the Clapham Café and Bunkhouse.. The bunkhouse is open all of the year and its position makes it a great base to see the area.
We decided to do a walk towards Ingleborough Cave along the Ingleborough Estate Nature trail. The entrance fee to the estate is one pound and leads to a well-made gravel track through old beech woodland alongside the beck. It was a beautiful autumn day with a clear sky and low chance of rain.
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| Autumn colours alongside the track |
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| Helen by an old Yew tree straddling the bank. |
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| Waterfall from the artificial lake |
The path gets closer to the beck with a view of a waterfall at the southern end of a lake. There are splendid views through the woodland with many large beech trees and mixture of yew, holly, oak and birch. The path soon reaches the cave that you can tour, but we didn't and continued north-east along the track to Trow Gill, a narrow ravine leading after a short climb to Clapham Bottoms (about 330 m altitude).
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| Large Hawthorn trees near the entrance to the cave with lots of red berries, a sign of a hard winter to come. I hade noticed lots of large Hawthorns with berries on my Dartmoor walk. |
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| The track to Trow Gill |
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| View over to the Ingleborough Hills (Little Ingleborough, 637 m). The footpath to the peaks goes through the gate and then gently ascends. |
We followed the track over rough ground towards Gaping Gill but turned on another footpath to follow the east side of the valley and then uphill to the "Long Lane" back towards Clapham village.
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| Path from the valley to "Long Lane". |
We had a late afternoon tea at "Grace Organics" a small horticultural group on the edge of Clapham, Emily had volunteered here so it was good to see around and see what was growing in the greenhouses.
The following day we went by train to Skipton in Yorkshire, a little further on the same train line. We had been to Skipton some years ago and remembered the market in the high street and difficulty parking. Anyway, on this visit we had no such problems. Again the train station is away from the centre but only a ten minute walk. There are plenty of places to get coffee and food in the centre and it was not too busy as there was no market.
The weather was not brilliant with overcast conditions and a threat of rain. Our first visit was to the castle which is at the top of the high street. This is probably the most intact castle that we'd visited and you felt a real sense of what it must have been like although I struggled understanding how a garrison of 300 could have lived there during the three year siege during the civil war. The castle was a loyalist stronghold but eventually Cromwell got his way and the roof was removed. After it's restoration in 1659, a Yew tree was planted in the forecourt to celebrate. Three hundred and sixty years later it still stands proud and healthy, reaching to the sky between the forecourt walls.
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| The steep North Wall of the castle viewed from the moat on the riverside walk. |
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| Near the entrance to Skipton Castle Woods. |
After returning to town for lunch we made our way to Skipton Castle Woods. We followed well marked routes, firstly on the river valley route passing beneath the castle walls, and then on the upper path extension through the beech woods to descend to the stream. We then ascended the east side of the valley past some old coppiced lime trees returning to "Round Dam" and on high ground to the car park and into town again. We liked the willow sculptures (there is a horse sculpture on the high level route) and the old mixed woodland of beech, oak, ash, lime, chestnut sycamore, aspen to name a few. This woodland during earlier times would have been a hive of activity providing timber, charcoal and woodland products for households and the estate in general. There were also quarries for the masons.
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| A small woodland stream on it's way past the "Round Dam" |
We returned to Lancaster and the following day hired cycles to do a circular ride north along the canal to the locks at the end near Tewitfield and by minor roads back to the centre stopping on route for lunch. The roads were not busy but I'm afraid we got drenched in the afternoon rain. The area is good for cycling with cycle tracks in the city and minor roads with less traffic going into the Yorkshire Dales. We look forward to exploring more on future visits.
