My friend and I have challenged ourselves to walk the Dales 30, I bought the book by Jonathan Smith of the same name where he suggests routes to climb all thirty mountains in the Yorkshire Dales National Park.

One mountain which we weren’t looking forward to is Yockenthwaite Moor. It isn’t particularly high, but it’s like one big bog, in fact the author reckons there isn’t a worse approach to a summit in Scotland or Wales!! He lost his boot in one of the bogs and had to dig down a foot to retrieve it!!…he really doesn’t sell it as a walk to look forward to. He suggests walking it either when it’s dry or frozen…

We’re just coming to the end of a long dry spell, so when we were trying to decided where to walk on Monday we decided it’s now or never (well maybe next year sometime!!) We were’t going to get it any drier.

The wonderfully named Yockenthwaite is a tiny hamlet in Langstrothdale, basically you go to the top of Wharfedale and turn left. I think it only consists of three farms and a post box! If anyone has been watching the recent All Creatures Great and Small on the TV, they filmed some of it here. It’s a beautiful spot. I was playing with the panorama button on my new camera so it’s somewhat distorted but you get the idea…

We walked over the old stone bridge, through the farm, then up the steep stony track towards the moor. Once that petered out we were following our noses with the odd compass bearing across the peat haggs to the trig point on the summit.

The peat bogs were completely dry, which was great, but it was still really hard to walk on as it was like walking on beds of sphagnum moss, totally spongy and unpredictable, my walking poles frequently disappeared a foot into the tussocks. Not a great place for someone like me with no balance! The only good thing was that when the inevitable happened and I lost my balance and fell, it was a very soft, dry landing, only it was so soft I ended up stranded like a turtle on my back, unable to get up!! This is when you find out what a true friend you have…when they take a photo before they help you up 😀

Once we were on the plateau the stream beds of the bog which would usually be deep in water proved much easier walking. The peat haggs were several feet high in places, we were peering over the tops to make sure we were following a stream bed in the right direction. This is one of the tarns on the top, all bone dry…

I did have a bit of a wobble, a Kendal Mint Cake moment, as we neared the trig point. We could see it in the distance but it was still quite a way off and it was such hard going I was really starting to struggle energy wise. I could have quite easily have called it a day. I told my walking buddy I needed a stop, I drank some water and remembered my emergency rations of Kendal Mint Cake at the bottom of my rucksack. I ate nearly half a bar of Kendal Mint Cake.

Kendal Mint Cake is basically mint flavoured sugar in a bar , I’ve always said the only place I can eat it is half way up a mountain as it is so sweet…but sometimes that sugar boost is just what you need. Another friend who I used to go walking with in my twenties had kindly sent me a parcel of Kendal Mint Cake last year and since then I’ve always had a bar in the bottom of my rucksack, emergency rations…so thank you Jane, it saved the day!

It was just what I needed and perked me up enough to get to the summit…

The views from the top were hazy and distant due to the size of the plateau, but behind me you can just make out the shapes of Pen-y-ghent, Whernside and Ingleborough, known as the Yorkshire Three Peaks.

The way down wasn’t any easier, just because of the terrain, though the views down Wharfedale and across Langstrothdale were lovely. This is the hillside across the dale from Yockenthwaite taken from the track just above the hamlet…

…and a hazy view of Wharfedale.

We’d actually only walked less than five miles, so not far distance wise, but it was probably one of the toughest ones we’ve done just because it was such hard terrain to walk on. We’re glad we’ve done it and can tick it off the list…but we’re not repeating the experience!