Day 42: Wharfedale

Distance: 19ish
Weather: All

England has definitely decided to show us what she can do weather wise today. The wind blew most of the day, pushing the clouds through at a good clip. That meant alternating sun and rain all day. That is, until we climbed up a bit. Then the rain turned to hail!


Even with the crazy weather, this might have been our most picturesque walk so far. And that's saying something! We started the day heading a half a mile up the road to check out the 12th century remains of Bolton Priory.


The nave of the church (at the left under the English flag) is intact and is a parish church today.


The rest of the structure hasn't fared as well. Construction began in the 12th century, but Scottish raiders did considerable damage in the 14th century, and by the time the monasteries were dissolved in the 16th century, construction on the unfinished priory was abandoned.


We were able to pick up our trail for the day, the Dales Way, right behind the ruins. The Dales Way is yet another awesome long distance path that runs 84 miles from Ilkley in Yorkshire to Bowness-on-Windermere in the Lake District. We joined it in Wharfedale, the best dale of them all according to one of the local walkers we ran into on the trail. I don't doubt that assessment, even though we haven't seen the others. Wharfedale and the River Wharfe are spectacular. The river looked high and was moving fast. It alternated between wide quietly powerful stretches and frantic rapids.





It really is one of the most beautiful rivers we've ever seen. We didn't even mind when the rain started and the wind threatened to blow me over.

The picturesqueness did cause one problem. By lunch we were nowhere near half way to our destination because Al kept talking pictures of the hills, river, farmhouses and sheep.








Luckily, his battery died not long after lunch. If it hadn't, we'd have never gotten to Kettlewell.

I do have to admit that he did get possibly the cutest lamb picture ever.


It's been fun being able to see lambs during our entire walk. The sheep were lambing in Cornwall when we first started and as we've moved north, so has lambing season. Today we even saw a brand new lamb being licked clean by its mum minutes after being born. It was amazing. I think the ewe might have had another on the way, but we decided to give them some privacy.

Tomorrow we move out of Wharfedale over the high moor to Bishopsdale. It will be sad to leave Wharfedale, especially since in my mind it's Worf's Dale.