This walk was undertaken October 4th 2007. Weather was raining initially, but brightened up later on. Part of our epic trek in and around Yorkshire.
8.4Miles in total.
Equipment. Boots (although Approach shoes could have been a goer here), warm and waterproof clothing in the ruck just in case. Snacks by KP
.
--------------------------------------------------
At long last a friend and I tackle the easiest (comparatively of course) of the Yorkshire Three peaks. Now I know Whernside doesn't have the oomph of Pen-Y-Ghent and the views from Ingleborough, and vice versa, but we'd just spent all day tramping around York and it's many attractions*, plus we'd previously expended significant effort climbing the Old Man of Coniston (as it happened the hard way) and spending a huge amount of cash on Gingerbread in Grassmere.
So we though we need a challenge, we need something good, but we needed it comparatively easy as well. So Whernside it was. A good choice as well, despite the weathers initial showing Whernside was a nice, moderately challenging walk.
As ever we start at the car (well walking from Kirkby Malzeard would have been just too much). For the sake of completeness I've included a map route but it's really not required on Whernside as all routes are very well signposted and pretty obvious. I mean even we found the start of this walk with no problems.
The footpath takes you very near the famous Ribblehead Viaduct, and mighty impressive it is too, as I hope the photographs testify. As this Is a working viaduct the occasional train whizzes by and you have the usual railway paraphernalia (Signal boxes etc). Thankfully these have been sympathetically treated so still fit in with the surroundings.
So far all is pretty easy and flat. However as you cross the railway, things starts to become more hilly. More uppy-downy (technical term, stop me if it gets too much
) as you start the climb to Whernsides summit proper.
Thankfully it hadn't been raining too much (only really spits and spots as we arrived) the waterfalls weren't in full flow, so you'll have to imagine what they looked like as I haven't posted them here.
There were a few other walkers around so after a short while we picked a spot roughly halfway up to have a bite to eat, take a few snaps and gather our strength for the final leg to the top.
* Pubs.
© Dazza