Day Twenty Seven

Friday 2 April - Malham to Horton-in-Ribblesdale.

I had spent a high-tech night. On the bed at the b&b were three remote controls – one for the telly, one for the Freesat box, and one which produced a whirring noise above the bed. It turned out that it controlled two Velux windows and their blinds.

Unusually for me, I was not walking alone. A colleague from work was staying in Malham for a few days, and we had arranged to walk together until lunchtime, at which point he would loop back to Malham. Malham Cove is a very short walk from the village. It was a grey day, and the greys of the cove were not at their most impressive, until we climbed up to the top – there it was very impressive indeed.

If you ever wondered what a limestone pavement was, come and see this one. It's like a huge quantity of crazy paving without the grouting between. You can step and hop across it, as long as you take care to avoid the cracks. And looking down, I could appreciate the height in a way that had somehow evaded me at the bottom.

“Standing some 80 metres high and 300 metres wide and north of the mid craven fault, Malham Cove is a curved crag of carboniferous limestone formed after the last ice age. Meltwater, particularly from Malham Tarn, cut back the cove as it fell over the edge as a waterfall. This erosion took place more actively at the lip of the fall rather than at the sides, hence the curved shape. The magnificent limestone pavement on the surface of the Cove is deeply fissured and fretted by a pattern of channels. Chemical weathering due to the slightly acidic rain dissolves and widens the many joints of the limestone (running very near to the direction nnw-sse), carving the patterns that can be seen today. The resulting limestone pavement is known as 'clints' or 'grykes', where the naked limestone lumps are the clints and the fissures in between are the grykes. The grykes are home to many rare (shade-loving) plants - harts-tongue fern, wood-sorrel, wood-garlic, geranium, anemone, rue, and enchanter's nightshade.” (malhamdale.org)

We pressed on up a dry valley, round a small hill, and across grassland to the boggy edge of Malham Tarn. Especially on a dull day it seemed austere and aloof, making no attempt to seduce passing tourists like me. But I always enjoy walking by water in a way I can't explain. We walked about half way round the tarn, passing the Field Studies Centre, the “mission control” for the study of the plants, birds and animals which thrive in this environment. Bats live happily in the outhouses, birds abound on the water, and other creatures are also resident – for now.

“A colony of huge cave spiders are finally heading home after 10 years. The spiders have been squatting in a disused building in the Yorkshire Dales after escaping from a nearby cave, hidden in scientists' equipment. Volunteers and staff from the National Trust's Malham Tarn estate in North Yorkshire are now transporting the spiders back to their natural home. Measuring seven centimetres across, the cave spiders are amongst the largest spiders found in the UK. 'The time has come for the cave spiders to be relocated back to their natural homes,' says Martin Davies, National Trust property manager for the Yorkshire Dales in the UK.” (BBC Earth News, December 2009)

We headed North again, the walking now pleasantly dry. When we reached a road, my colleague peeled off to investigate a (to him) new valley on his way back to Malham. I continued on the PW which, after a level stretch, started to twist and turn, climbing steadily round the flanks of Fountains Fell. Notices warned of old mine workings, and the map is peppered with them. These are just a reminder that this landscape is far from “natural” in any original sense. Trees have been completeley cleared from what are now bleak moors (there must have been lots of trees once, to produce the squishy peat I had been passing through), and as I have said, huge numbers of holes have been dug, by hand, to extract the rock and minerals.

All the height I had painstakingly gained (up to about 2000 feet) I lost again in a precipitous descent to a valley with a road running through it and the star attraction of the area, Pen-y-ghent, rising eccentrically on the other side.

This local monster, with its cliff-like ramparts, seems too silly a climb to include as part of a walk. But the beaten track, and the noticeable increase in foot traffic, bear witness to the popularity of this climb. The only twenty minutes of rain during my day's walk, with strong and gusty winds, accompanied my ascent. The clouds had been glued to the peak for a couple of hours, so I expected no views – I was not to be disappointed.

The books say it's not as difficult as it looks, and that is perfectly true. The route is clear, mostly consisting of natural steps with a bit of artificial assistance, so you just plod up, in my case trying to keep my face out of the direct blast of the horizontal rain. After the straight-up bit, the route becomes a damp path gently upwards to the trig point. Views nil.

A wall runs almost across the summit. On the approach side, the wind and rain drove across me, but on the far side of the wall it was a different world. Calmly serene, a party of walkers were picknicking in the still air, for all the world as though they had just lost the sunshine for a few seconds (except that they were wearing rather more layers than the average sunbather).

The descent is at first steep and strewn with loose stones, then gentler while still quite rough. The path levels out across what anywhere else would be the valley of a stream – this being limestone country, here the stream (as shown on the map) disappears down a hole further up the valley. Help protect this fragile environment by keeping to the path, a notice exhorts us. It seems as tough as old boots to me, but I obeyed the injunction.

Turning South, the PW follows a (very) stony track between stone walls for one and a half miles into Horton-in-Ribblesdale, where another Pen-y-ghent is the lure. This one is the cafe which is also an information bureau and life support centre for walkers and climbers. The treacle tart went down well.