8 mile circular walk to the top of Buckden Pike at 702 m
From our base in Catterick we drove for 50 minutes through the picturesque Yorkshire Dales and parked in Buckden village car park. This is a pay and display car park (although the meter wasn’t working when we visited) and has toilets available.
Using their planning and map reading skills, Mike and Russell led each of the walks throughout our walking week. This post is a summary of our experiences and the walk was similar to this: https://www.walkingbritain.co.uk/walk-2132-description
From the car park we walked towards Upper Wharfdale and soon came to a stream which needed to be crossed (top picture). As the weather had been quite rainy, the stream was probably a little deeper than usual but we all managed to jump across the stones without falling in and without getting too wet!
We climbed higher and through the mist we could see the rolling hills and green fields of the Wharfdale Valley as they emerged into view.
We turned left and walked towards Buckden lead mine, still climbing as we went.
From the lead mine we continue up towards Buckden Pike and the weather really began to deteriorate…
At the summit… Buckden Pike is one of the highest peaks in the Yorkshire Dales and the climb and poor weather proved to be good preparation for Whernside, two days later…
From there we descended down along the flagstone path towards Cray. At some point we stopped and sheltered next to a wall to eat our lunch in the rain.
Thankfully the weather gradually improved as we reached the River Wharfe which we had to cross shortly before crossing the B6160 road, near to the White Lion pub. The pub was open so it was very tempting to visit however we were soaking wet and muddy so decided to cross the road, pushing on towards Hubberholme.
This part of the walk along the bottom of the valley was fairly flat so not too onerous and we continued for about half an hour. However by now Chris and Flo were cold and soaked so the three of us headed back for two miles towards the car while Mike, Russell and Roza continued and did the entire walk as planned (only another couple of miles extra).
Chris, Flo and I arrived back at the holiday house and lit the fire ready for the others to return.
In spite of the poor conditions we had a fab day and a sense of achievement as we hoped for better weather during the rest of the week…
frombluetogreen.com 
2 comments