Low Row in the Yorkshire Dales

11:10am Saturday 19th July 2008

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LOW Row is a hamlet a few miles out from Reeth in Swaledale in the north of the Dales. We were here for a few days’ stay, despite the weather forecast, because a webcam in the valley showed sunshine, so there’s plenty of Swaledale to come, if not sunshine.

At Low Row is the Punch Bowl Inn, our refuge and comfort to come, but first we walked. Typically the start was a climb on a twisting narrow dead-end lane. By now Swaledale green and spacey and the heavy tiled roofs of Low Row were well below and the altitude was a thousand feet.

A contour of a mile or more took us past Gallows Top and Hill Top and Birk Park, some places in good repair, some on the way to ruin, some with swinging views. There were grouse galore, the sweet sound of a farmer cursing his sheep and tall foxgloves to brighten the way.

Then all changed. Deep in a steep valley runs Barney Beck. Later we were to find our room at the inn so named. No luxuriating here though and down by the beck it was clear we couldn’t cross the flow and so we penetrated the insect humming, humid and fern fronded waterside woods as far as possible and then got out, hauled ourselves out, using a wire fence, on a path more direct than on the OS map and significantly steep.

Open grassland to heather was a welcome change. Six oystercatchers arrowed over the valley and we followed, upstream, reinvigorated by the mile, to Surrender Bridge. Here the stream gets a name change to either Mill Gill or Old Gang Beck.

Across the water is a complex of stone ruins that at first glance could be a couple of cottages. The names and the buildings are all lead mining remnants, this a smelt mill that operated from 1839 to 1881. Barney Beck was the dominant leadmining area producing 65 per cent of Swaledale’s production.

A grassy track took us away, the usual grassland gang of ground nesting birds showed, notably, with contrasting flight and call, the curlew and the lapwing. A raptor checked out the grouse butts. Blades is a pivotal cluster of houses if you walk hereabouts and from it the lane dropped fast into the wetting valley. It hadn’t been quite the warm-up walk we had planned, but interesting, and a night at the Punch Bowl set us up for the next day.

Directions

1. From Punch Bowl Inn, pass church, first road right uphill.

2. After East Broccabank house on hairpin bend, walled track on right. Fieldgate, path across moor, track by houses.

3. Cross road to track (fingerpost Kearton). Fieldgate near Langhorne House, gateway (yellow blob), 5 yards, gate (waymark) and by wall, fieldgate behind house and right by wall, 100 yards, gated squeezer (blob), cross grass 25 yards to wall, stile to left of house, uphill across field, gated squeezer/fieldgate.

4. Cross road, cross grass, squeezer by furthest garden (blob), grass path 1 o’clock to wall stile (fingerpost), 2 o’clock across field towards roofs (arm missing off fingerpost), squeezer with ‘loose’ gate, through yard in front of house, stile/fieldgate into yard, to right of large barn and 50 yards through young trees to metal gate, 20 yards and, on usage route, continue downhill, wall to your right.

5. Gate into wood and immediately path angling left downhill, not straight down. Left to path paralleling river, sometimes faint.

6. At wall/fence, over the fence and path on left uphill to reconnect with fence, very steep.

7. Stile at top edge of wood and right to path beside fence, then wall, skirts boggy area, from wall corner straight on 100 yards to road.

8. Right to road downhill. Left at T-junction (sign Low Row), S-bend, 100 yards.

9. Grass track on right (only a birds sign, gravel strip near road).

10. Fieldgate in wall. Track swings down and through Blades. Left to road (dead-end).

Fact file

Distance: Five miles.

General location: Yorkshire Dales.

Start: Low Row.

Right of way: Public and open.

Map: Drawn from OS Explorer OL30 Yorkshire Dales northern and central.

Dogs: Illegal.

Date walked: July 2008.

Road route: Via Richmond.

Car parking: Low Row or Gallows Top.

Lavatories: No.

Refreshments: The Punch Bowl Inn at Low Row.

Tourist and public transport information: Reeth National Parks office 01748 884059.

Terrain: Valley and tops.

Points of interest: On the wall outside the Reeth Park office is a useful map of the Open Access Land in Swaledale and next to it an up-to-date list of any temporary access restrictions that you can easily locate to numbered zones on the map. For that ten out of ten to the Park Authority, but for on-the-ground waymarking of public routes a lower score.

Difficulty: Unusually steep climb.

Please observe the Country Code and park sensibly. While every effort is made to provide accurate information, walkers set out at their own risk.