Wonderful Waterfall Walk

Waterfalls Walk - Ingleton.
http://www.ingletonwaterfallswalk.co.uk/index.htm

Today I started training for a walk I plan to do up Mount Snowden in Wales (highest mountain in England and Wales) next year. In fact, I may attempt three peaks in England, Scotland and Wales. Still putting my plans together - it'll be a fund-raising effort for Pancreatic Cancer research.

We headed over to Ingleton in the beautiful Yorkshire Dales to do the Waterfalls Walk. It is the first time we've done this walk in about 10 years. It's a beautiful walk and the day was perfect - warm and sunny and clear. We figured that if it got very hot in the afternoon, we'd be nice and cool on the shady footpath round the rivers.

So, we paid our £4 each for the privilege of walking the trail (including parking) and started walking at 11.20am. The trail is rocky and uneven, apart from when it hits really the steep sections and there they've put in massive steps. By that I mean steps that sap your energy as you climb up them - they're pretty high. After a while, each set of stairs got tougher and tougher. My heart was pounding hard and felt at times as if it were about to leap out of my chest. God I'm unfit. This was a real wake up call!

We stopped several times to admire the view. Well really, it was so that I could get my breath back. Half way round we stopped for a sandwich. Then onwards for the final push home. We'd fooled ourselves that the second section of the walk was going to be all down hill - in fact it wasn't. It was both up and down hill in equal measure - absolute murder on the knees!!

The picture below is looking toward Ingleborough hill - one of the three highest peaks in the Yorkshire Dales. The other two are Whernside and Pen-y-Ghent. We've climbed the first two - but not Pen-y-Ghent. They are on the list for the training plan!

Well, the point of today's blog was to insert my photographs, but Blogger is failing me... so I'll have to put them in tomorrow. Ah - they seem to be uploading now. However, these photographs alone can't convey the power and energy of the water... the noise was incredible at some of the falls. I hope you can see the tea coloured water falling over the rocks... it looks really unusual. But first, another view from the long open section of the trail - this section cuts across a couple of farms and takes you from the first river - the River Twiss - to the second one, River Doe.

There's also a picture here of a fallen tree with coins embedded into bark... there are several of these around the walk. I remember taking my nephew Joe, about 12 years ago when he was only 6 years old. Of course, he was the only child trying to take the coins OUT rather than put them in, LOL!

Some of the falls on the second half of the walk (you move on from one river to another one) are more beautiful than on the first section. Although it's hard to call as they're all nice, in my opinion.

It took us 3 hours (including stops) to complete the 4 and a half mile walk. After the walk was finished (and it was really hot by then) we had a quick coffee and then set off back home, calling in at Skipton on the way. There was a Farmers' Market at the Canal Basin... unfortunately the Farmers were all packing up to go home by the time we arrived (about 3pm).

So we wandered into the High Street (via an ice cream shop) and then back down the canal. From Skipton all the way to the A1 at Harrogate we were stuck behind the same red coach. It was driving me crackers! But finally we arrived home, tired, but feeling that we'd achieved something today.