Each year my friend and I try and do a long distance walk, last year we did the Yorkshire Wolds Way, this year we have decided to do the Swale Way which follows the River Swale from it’s end where it joins the Ure near Boroughbridge to it’s source up at the top end of Swaledale above Keld. Altogether it’s about 80 miles, we’ll take quite a few days to walk it as we don’t like doing more than 10 or 12 miles in a day.

We’re completing the first few miles as day walks, part of our practise regime to get out stamina up! Yesterday we had a good start to the walk, the weather was perfect, much better than we expected from the weather forecast, sunny but not too hot. and more importantly, no rain!

We started at Boroughbridge, a small town on the edge of the Vale of York. We started our walk with our traditional sausage roll and a view of the weir. You can just see the heron hoping for some breakfast on the rocks in the middle.

This is actually the River Ure, the one which flows down Wensleydale, most of the Yorkshire Dales are named after the river, Wensleydale is the exception, Wensley is now a small village but used to be the most important town in the dale until it was decimated in medieval times by the Black Death. We followed the River Ure for a couple of miles to the confluence with the Swale.

This is the point where the Swale finishes, the Swale is coming down from the left, joining the Ure coming from the right. We celebrated with a coffee break…

We walked along a levee as far as Myton bridge before turning off into the village. Levees are naturally formed when a river floods, depositing a mound of silt along it’s banks, however this one was rather tall so I suspect it was substantially added to to prevent flooding many years ago. We then had a fair bit of road walking, albeit quiet roads, until we reached the villages of Helperby and Brafferton. The two villages merge into each other, so I’m not sure where one finishes and the next starts. I think this is the Brafferton end!

There were some interesting old houses to study as we walked through. We did have a giggle as we saw a sign outside a rather large mansion, it said ‘No parking tanks below’ I must have had my military daughter on my mind as I understood it to mean the army couldn’t park their tanks there!! It was only when we got home and I showed it to my OH and he pointed out that it meant no parking as there were tanks under the pavements!!

We decided Brafferton was far enough for our first day, we had walked about 7 miles, so we got a taxi back to Boroughbridge. The next walk won’t be for a couple of weeks, then the big walk is in June.

A good start to this years challenge.