The Dales Way - A Walker's Guide
The Dales Way
Price
£10.00
Bolton Abbey (Waterfall Bridge) to Barden Bridge
5.1km (3.2 miles)
Cross the footbridge (Waterfall Bridge, signposted ‘Barden Bridge’) spanning the Wharfe at Bolton Abbey and immediately go left, taking the lower of two paths. The low route (mainly an indistinct green track) cuts across riverside pasture – our first taste of the Wharfe's true left bank – and follows the base of a slope and a line of oak trees to a stile. Beyond, a path continues more clearly, directly above the river, to which it shortly descends, and then heads upriver.
This is a good place to look for birdlife along the river – little grebe, mallard, dipper, goosander, kingfisher, and a small gathering of mandarin duck that must have escaped from a wildfowl collection. Long-tailed tit, coal tit, goldfinch, great spotted woodpecker, nuthatch and tree creeper may be seen among the trees.
The path stays with the river only briefly before climbing into the wooded slopes above to follow a path through stands of beech, oak and sycamore.
Keep an eye open for a 'money' tree – a fallen tree into which people have hammered coins. They have no mystique or legendary significance, so far as I can tell.
The on-going path undulates and finally emerges briefly onto Storiths Lane. Turn left and cross Pickles Beck by ford or footbridge, and immediately go left on a path heading back towards the river, to another path going right through a gap-stile and onto a broad path leading to the Wooden Bridge at Cavendish Pavilion. Cross the bridge (though there is a perfectly acceptable alternative route following the true left bank of the Wharfe, meeting up with the original line at the aqueduct just south of Barden Bridge).
Tea and snacks are generally available at Cavendish Pavilion throughout most of the year, and with so much attractive scenery, pleasant circular walks, nature trails and an abundance of nearby parking, it is inevitably a honeypot that on fine weekends swarms with visitors quite like nowhere else along the way until you reach Bowness. A small shop here (not open all year) sells a variety of maps, booklets, sweets, etc., and used to levy a small toll for entering the woods, which are private, and its pathways permissive only. The toll no longer applies (though there is no guarantee it will not return!).
Turn right, heading across a small car park to the entrance to Strid Wood.
Strid Wood
You don't have to be a trained naturalist to recognise immediately that Strid Wood is somewhere quite special, and almost certainly unique. It will be a rare occasion if you have the woods to yourself, for their heavily laden beauty and powerful natural qualities draw people from far and near to potter about among moss-covered grottoes, banks of fern, trees, rock formations and cascading water. Strid Wood is magnificent at all times of the year, but exceptional in spring and autumn, the one when the many wild flowers that colonise this narrow sanctum are bursting through, the other when the burnished bronze colours are at their most intense.
In the 16th century the forests of Skipton and Knaresborough met here at the River Wharfe, and it used to be said that a squirrel could travel all the way between the two towns without touching the ground. Strid Wood's position in a deep gorge made it unsuitable as farmland, and so protected it from the tree clearances that occurred on the surrounding land.
Not surprisingly, in 1985 the wood was designated a site of special scientific interest (SSSI) under the terms of a management agreement with the Nature Conservancy Council, for it contains the largest area of acidic oak woodland and the best remnant of oak wood pasture in the Yorkshire Dales National Park. Being an upland site favours the native sessile oak, which can be identified by the lack of a stalk supporting the acorns. Unlike the English, or pendunculate oak, the sessile oak can thrive on the wetter, less fertile acidic soils of the north.
Strid Wood Conservation Area is renowned for its wealth of flora and fauna. Most of the trees are broadleaved, either sycamore or beech, the largest of which are between 250 and 300 years old. In addition, there is about 10 per cent ash, 6 per cent birch and a small number of oak. The ornithologist will discover as many as 62 species of nesting bird, while naturalists interested in lichen will find Strid Wood to be unrivalled in Yorkshire, with over 80 species, twice as many as elsewhere. Other surveys list 5 bat species, 97 species of fungi, 40 of mollusca, 41 of liverworts, 98 mosses, many rare or very local in distribution. Altogether a remarkable place.
As you enter Strid Wood, follow the broad track ahead and basically keep going. There are a number of colour-coded trails (originally laid out in the 19th century by the vicar of Bolton), but continue following this trail, ignoring deviations left and right, until you reach an information board close by the Strid Gorge, where the river has taken on a new lease of life. A short diversion is necessary to inspect the Strid proper, but take care as the rocks are very slippery.
The Strid Gorge
The chasm of the Strid is a great attraction. Here the river, intense, agitated, laden with the waters of a dozen mountains, squeezes itself through a narrow channel between the rocks, setting up forces that have claimed many a life. Indeed, legend has it that it was the drowning of Alice de Romille's son, the Boy of Egremond, in the early part of the 12th century that caused his sorrowing mother to found the first priory of Augustinian canons that in 1154 was to become Bolton Priory. But this is an easy legend to dispute, since the lad's signature appears on the deed of endowment of the land on which the priory now stands. Nevertheless, it is a powerfully dangerous spot, and no place for a quick dip, however much you might need it.
At one time the Strid flowed in a small waterfall or rapids over the outcrop of rock lower downstream. To begin with the erosion of the softer rocks formed a series of potholes which in time linked to produce a deep chasm and underwater system. The danger lies in its great depth, not quite so obvious when viewed from above, and the sheer force of water. In 1984 a group of subaqua divers from Leeds University carried out an underwater survey, in spite of experiencing great difficulty in standing against the strong current and flow of debris. Although they were unable to reach the base of the main waterfall, its depth was calculated at 9m (30ft).
Just beyond the information board, a path curves left and leads out to the Strid car park. Follow this briefly, but soon branch right onto a path above the river, resuming the upriver direction. The path climbs high above the river, but soon descends to run along the riverbank and through the lightly wooded northern end of Strid Wood.
A footbridge spans inflowing Barden Beck, beyond which the path continues upriver. On reaching the next bridge – actually an aqueduct carrying Nidderdale water to Bradford taps – go left, up steps to cross to the opposite bank. There turn left to a kissing gate returning you to the true left bank of the river for an easy stroll to Barden Bridge, en route passing Barden Tower partially concealed in woodland on the opposite bank. At Barden Bridge you emerge onto the road at a gate.
(The author has a slight preference for passing beneath the aqueduct and remaining on the right bank as far as Barden Bridge, on the grounds that it provides a better view of the river sweeping away to Barden Bridge. Just before leaving the woodland that gathers close by Barden Bridge on the true right bank, a metal notice indicates that the woodland was substantially replanted in 1894 – which gives some idea of what 110-year old trees look like.)
Barden Bridge is a delightful monument in itself, narrow and not at all suited to modern traffic, while its neat pedestrian alcoves offer a splendid vantage point looking east to Earl Seat and west to Barden Moor. There is a lovely inscription on the easterly retaining wall of Barden Bridge which says that it was repaired in 1671 (or thereabouts), though part of the legend is illegible.
Barden Tower
A short deviation from the way is needed to visit Barden Tower. In its early days just another hunting lodge in the Forest of Barden, the tower grew in stature when the feudal baron at Skipton, Henry Clifford, the 'Shepherd Lord', one of the Clifford line who for four centuries were lords of Skipton and Craven, rebuilt the lodge and made it his principal residence. During the Wars of the Roses, while hiding from the Yorkists who had killed his father and grandfather, Clifford spent his youth in the Cumbrian fells tending sheep. He was restored to his Skipton estates by Henry VII, but chose to live in the more rural setting at Barden Tower.
In 1658 Lady Anne Clifford restored the building, which had decayed to a ruin, and the result is a complicated blend of 15th- and 16th-century architecture. It is difficult to discern between the different builds, but a 15th-century fireplace has been cut in half by a 17th-century wall.
Following Lady Anne's death it was taken over by the Earls of Cork, but fell into decline in the late 18th century. Now the tower is a ruin, as it has been for almost 200 years. Once it was a formidable construction, built very much with marauding Scots in mind, though there is no evidence that its defences were ever put to the test.
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