14 miles
300 metres ascent
A shock to the system as winter returned after a week of summer. Gale force winds and low temperature found me under-dressed and cold and didn’t encourage the taking of photos. This was a circular walk following the pennine way from Gargrave to Malham and a return on different paths. We thought we’d walked every path in the dales but most of this was new ground which was a really nice surprise.
River Aire a few miles into the walk, not far from Airton.
It’s pretty easy going with little up and down, roughly following the line of the river Aire both there and back. Lots of birds around today – avocets, curlews, wagtails, wrens, herons, a buzzard, Joy took more notice of them than I did. She tells me we didn’t see any swallows, she’s keeping an eye out for the first of the year.
Nearer to Malham.
Gordale Scar in the distance, centre of picture.
We saw hardly anyone until we got to Malham, which was crowded at the end of a bank holiday week, but we left it straight away and left the people behind again.
Looking back to Kirkby Malham
There was a strange occurrence later on near Airton. Sheep always run away from you when you enter a field but in this small paddock all of the sheep and lambs ran up to us and surrounded us. As we walked on they followed very closely with the lambs jumping up on us. I’ve never seen that before and I’ve got no explanation for it.
Very oddly-behaving sheep – normally they keep well away.