Pothole Hunting at Ribblehead

Ribblehead

Friday, 12 March 2010

2.75 miles with 300 of ascent (1 hours 50 mins)
Walked with Sheena and Tim dog
6 ºC, fresh NW winds, light showers and cloudy with sunny spells
Start - Ribblehead - roadside parking (SD765792)
Maps - OL Nº2 (1:25,000) or Landranger Nº90 (1:50,000)

Map your trip with EveryTrail

We'd booked up to spend a couple of nights over at Ingleton, in the Yorkshire Dales. The aim was to start doing the 'Wainwright Walks in Limestone Country' one of the projects that we've set ourselves to complete over the next several months, we hope! As we had to pass Ribblehead on the way to Ingleton we decided to stop off and do Walk 22, a pot hole hunt over the moors. It turned out to be great fun, once we'd worked out that the path shown in AW's book wasn't the same one we were following! The OS map wasn't much help either as it didn't have the names of the caves on. We found them easy enough, as the descriptions were pretty good. We'd didn't do the second half of the walk along Thorns Gill though, as it involves a trespass across a couple of fields were there wasn't a right of way. Also the fields were the footpath did go were full of sheep waiting to have their lambs, so we decided not to take Tim dog through there.

There is plenty of roadside parking at Ribblehead, and there's a van doing refreshments most days!

The view of Whernside and the railway viaduct from the road

The first objective (Batty Wife Cave) was easy to find as it was right beside the road!

This is where we went wrong, as this track isn't the shown in AW's book!

A close up shot of the viaduct, it's really huge when you get this close to it.

Whernside from the other side of the viaduct, now let's go find a few more of the pot holes

Once we'd found this old lime kiln, which took a bit of finding, things were a lot easier

The one of the entrances to Roger Kirk Caves

Both Sheena and Tim were enjoying the cave hunting (well they looked to be!)

Over here I think I found another one!

Hang on, where have I disappeared to? Down the cave?????

The entrance to Thistle Caves

We aren't going done there are???? You know I can't see in the dark! This is really true, poor old Tim has problems seeing in the dark, so we have to make sure there's a light if we are out when it's dark.