Low Row, Yorkshire Dales

12:36pm Saturday 2nd August 2008

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This week, George Wilkinson finishes his series of three walks at Low Row in the Yorkshire Dales.

Gallows Top spooked my sturdy walker’s wagon, stopped it dead on the spot. The RAC fixed the coolant hose and replaced the water. We took tea in the Punch Bowl down the hill. Eleven o’clock and we were back. Though water gushed out of the ground, rattled over pastures and blasted through dry stone walls, in the still air over Swaledale it hung as vapours. Cattle lurked by a door moaning ‘this used to be our barn’.

The route follows the streams down into the valley to join the River Swale near Crackpot though we didn’t have to go quite that far on this walk. Instead we sat by the arches of the bridge where the river accelerates and watched an oystercatcher on the shingle banks. Walkers passed. Maybe they felt cheated by the weather, only one smiled, at the wriggle required for the tight squeezer stile.

The first down river length is strange, was disconcerting for my vertigo sensitive navigator.

The path is on the top of a wall that is six foot high, a yard wide, with the flags a bit slippy at the edges. We could not manage a quarter the speed of the river.

One side is the water, the other the meadows and pastures through which a footpath cum nature trail is marked by paddles of yellow plastic, this we declined. The oystercatchers reminded that they were still about by jetting past, straight, streamlined, flashy, fast and loud.

We chewed a riverside sandwich and were overtaken by a determined party of hikers. It was just as well because the next half mile could have been embarrassing. We’d watched the hikers vanishing and noticed that one of them did, but vertically. This is because of the four or five side streams. Normally, well not normally but after dry weather, these will be but a simple stretch of a single step. They were a bit more than that, a single leap on to uncertain vegetation. Said vegetation was in full bloom and a distracting loveliness of swathes of yellow monkey flower, Minulus guttatus, a naturalised alien from across the Atlantic. Wordsworth would have liked the show.

A certain nonchalance set in after one had misjudged a leap, wet is wet. At some point it had stopped raining but as we headed away from the river and steep up the valley, it was not exactly dry ground. The 300 foot wooded climb is cascade-close to a beck but the path was a temporary stream as well.

Reward came near the top, at a little blaze of botany, of orchids of two hues and bedraggled ragged robin. And it felt good be back out on the open pastures. A rope swing hangs from a lone tree. This was our last view from Gallows Top of the ‘grandest of all the Yorkshire Dales’ or so Ella Pontefract and Marie Hartley wrote in 1939.

Others, here under duress, might have thought different, but it’s convenient for Swaledale’s one time Corpse Road.

Directions

When in doubt look at the map. Check your position at each point. Keep straight on unless otherwise directed.

Alternative start from Low Row. Right from Punch Bowl Inn, pass church, first road right uphill is the road to Direction Number 2.

1. Gallows Top, track southwest (fingerpost Low Row opposite a track fingerposted Kearton), pass houses, path across moor for 100 yards then between two walls downhill, fieldgate, walled track.

2 Right to road by East Broccabank House, uphill.

Pass below Blades.

3. Road ends. Concrete track, swings left downhill. Ignore right fork to house, 100 yards, footbridge and fieldgate on left by house (Smarber Cottage), to grass track angling downhill across field, fieldgate, stone track.

4. Opposite garage, across grass and right to path beside wall, 150 yards, path downhill through trees. Fieldgate. Path. Left to road. Bench. First right (sign Crackpot) 5. Squeezer on left before bridge over River Swale (fingerpost Reeth 3½), up bank to field-edge path on bank and then on top of wall. Riverside path six stiles, step-streams.

6. Into wood, 100 yards, path on left (fingerpost Reeth), 50 yards, left. Left to road.

7. Walled track on right by stream, fieldgate, first 50 yards overgrown but passable – nettles (fingerpost Kearton), steep narrow path uphill. Gate, cross stream, gate and continue uphill. Gate (fingerpost), 50 yards.

8. Left to good track back to Gallows Top.

Fact file

Distance: Four-and-a-half miles.

General Location: Yorkshire Dales.

Start: Gallows Top, or Low Row.

Right of Way: Public.

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

Dogs: Legal.

Date walked: July 2008.

Road route: Via Reeth.

Car parking: Roadside Gallows Top or Low Row.

Lavatories: None.

Refreshments: The Punch Bowl Inn, Low Row.

Tourist and public transport information: Reeth TIC 01748 884059.

Terrain: Riverside and valleyside.

Points of interest: Wild Flowers and where to find them in Northern England – Waterside Ways written by Laurie Fallows and published in 2004 by Frances Lincoln.

Difficulty: Moderate.

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