A Walkers Tale

The previous day I had walked from Alston to Appleby-in-Westmorland - and having stayed over in Carlisle I was looking for a nearby walk that wouldn't involve too much walking. And having decided to do the Dales High Way in four separate walks, I figured that the shorter remaining section - from Sedbergh to Ribblehead would be ideal.

Today we are back ticking off sections of the Pennine Way - and after today we will only have the one section left to complete, between Byrness and Kirk Yetholm (although the plan is to finish this trail next year, as I now start to wind down the walking miles). My most recent day of walking on the Pennine Way also started at Alston - but since then there has been a change in the bus timetables, and so whilst the first bus out from Haltwhistle previously got in at 10am, that has been pushed back to 10:46 - which is a little bit too late a start to be comfortable in terms of train times in Appleby-in-Westmorland. In response I have changed the approach, and yesterday I took the train over to Carlisle, and stayed overnight.

Today I am picking up my first section of the Coast to Coast National Trail, and I will slowly complete the rest of the sections over the coming years.  But whilst this is a new trail to start ticking off - the area is very familiar, as my weekends for the past decade or so have generally been spent pottering about on the North Yorkshire Moors  - with his only changing once I had the time to start heading further afield.

Today the plan is to complete another section of the Pennine Bridleway - and this is another fairly long stretch starting at Hebden Bridge, and ending at Greenfield - but with the option of being able to split this walk at Littleborough. By this point I have learned that the  Pennine Bridleway  is definitely not an easier version of the Pennine Way - and this might in fact be the tougher route. But at the same time it is a very pretty route, and can easily match for the views found along the  Pennine Way .

The Dales Way is a walk I had started a year ago - and last September I had spent two days walking (mostly along) this trail, from Dent train station in the Yorkshire Dales to Ambleside in the Lake District (the final stretch to Ambleside was beyond the end of the  Dales Way ). Originally the plan was to walk the rest of the trail over two days, staying in Grassington - but lately I have been splitting walks up into smaller chunks - and today the plan is to head out and to do a single day of walking, along the  Dales Way  from Grassington to Ilkley.

The previous day I had planned to walk the Pennine Way from Alston to Appleby-in-Westmorland, stay over in Carlisle - and then head down today to walk from Ribblehead to Settle along the Pennine Bridleway . But in the end I'd had to abandon that walk before it could be started, after the bus driver let me know that he could only go so far towards Alston due to a road closure - and so I had to settle for a lovely walk along Hadrian's Wall . But today we are back on plan, and ticking off new sections of National Trails.