Since moving north from London to Manchester almost four years ago, I have met many Yorkshire folk, and there is always a fierce pride on show if the Yorkshire Dales come up in conversation.
“…far more beautiful than Lancashire” they would claim, occasionally a reference to “God’s county”, the Mancs would sometimes bite back but almost always concede defeat to the beauty of the Dales.
I had been intrigued, yet I had never actually visited. So, on a chilly morning just after the turn of the year, I decided to finally enter the vast Yorkshire Dales and conquer the county’s highest point, Whernside.
Although Whernside is high at 726m, and takes around 2 hours to reach the summit, it was a relatively easy climb with few overly steep inclines. However, Whernside’s appeal and lasting effect on both your body and mind is due precisely to its relatively tame nature. It’s a mountain that calms rather than excites. It stretches you out, detangles you.
In a way, climbing Whernside is like a cup of tea at your nan’s house on a Sunday afternoon – quiet, slow-paced, humbling. The walk and scenery at Whernside created a similar effect – so in this post I will take you briefly through this tough yet soothing experience.
I also made a short YouTube video to capture the feeling of the hike.
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It begins at Ribblehead, a tiny hamlet with a train station and a pub, where you’ll find plenty of fellow mountain walkers preparing for the ascent. I followed the Whernside circular walk as detailed by the Walking Englishman (an excellent resource) with the entire climb and descent of Whernside to take around 3-4 hours.
As my girlfriend and I made our first steps on the gravel track, the impressive viaduct that shoulders a train track comes immediately into view. The sheer size of this viaduct, built by men 150 years ago, provides inspiration of completing something grand yourself.
The first twenty minutes set the tone for the majority of Whernside. The sound of trickling streams, a pretty waterfall, an old-fashioned railway signal box and quaint wooden bridges, it’s a gentle warm up. Eventually we hit the incline and the work began; I slowly begin to feel a burn in my quads and a gradual breathlessness, as my four layers of clothing became three.
As Whernside puts my body on a low heat, it then rewards me with a view across a stretch of water at the foot of the mountain and another mountain, Pen-y-Ghent – which is also one of the famous Yorkshire Three Peaks. The surroundings are vast, open, almost barren looking as it was January and everything is tinged brown. A melancholic scene.
Trudging on through the mud, we approach the beginning of the main climb – the ridge of Whernside. Looking up and ahead, the ridge and summit are still partly covered in snow which makes the final climb a little trickier. But by now, after over an hour of quiet upward movement, we reach a state of perpetual motion where we don’t feel the aches, and my mind has de-cluttered itself by thinking about just one thing – reaching the top.
It’s a little icy, so there are a few moments where we need all four limbs to keep going, but once we’re almost at the top, everything flattens to an ultra-soft incline which eases us to the official high point of Yorkshire (incidentally the stone ‘high point’ is actually in Cumbria).
Atop Yorkshire, the view is incredible; Morecambe Bay in one direction, the Cowgill Montains another, an almost sheer drop down to the water below with Pen-y-Ghent facing you. It’s dramatic, but because the climb hasn’t totally knackered me, it feels like I’ve cheated my way up somehow.
Just as we thought we’d done the hard part – we begin the descent. This is steep, a never-ending journey of heavy stone steps. It was as though Whernside doesn’t let you get too big for your boots, it brings you back down the earth. A good half an hour of knee-knackering thuds, where you have to walk sideways due to the height of the steps, we arrive gratefully at the bottom, amongst a flock of sheep nonchalantly chewing grass.
By now the sun is bright but falling, and we need to get back to the starting point of the pub next to the viaduct. We see the viaduct in the distance, a huge structure yet still dwarfed by Pen-y-Ghent and the expansive moorland. The walk now was through farmer’s fields full of sheep and little lambs, with the soft grass a welcome relief for our joints.
The walk back towards to viaduct was actually the true highlight of climbing Whernside.
It’s twilight, the sun has disappeared below the broad Yorkshire plains and everything has a dreamy, blue-grey hue to it. To my left is the darkening presence of Whernside, to my right across the huge open moor is Pen-y-ghent. We’re now totally alone in an enormous space, such a rarity in normal life, and it was totally silent, but for the odd call of a sheep which echoed between the mountains and across the moors. It’s a meditative experience.
The dropping temperature snaps me out of my trance, and I push on with tired legs towards the viaduct, and more importantly, the pub. We reach our start/finish point, and as I stand in the doorway of the pub, I take in one last moment of the quiet, moonlit mountains.
It’s now reward time. I push open the heavy wooden door to be greeted by a wave of noise and laughter and a slightly sweaty odour of a pub full of walkers. We nod and smile to walkers we’d seen across the day, and their dogs chewing bones under the tables.
At last, we find a cosy corner of the pub with comfy armchairs and a log fire – and give our legs a break! I raise a well-deserved pint of frothy Yorkshire ale, almost like a toast to Whernside – “Perfection”, thought.
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After a fast-paced week of work I felt detangled; the mental and physical knots were ironed out by the natural masseuse that is Whernside. Or was it just the spirit of the Dales in general? I have to admit that the scenery, locals, and atmosphere on the wall and in nearby villages we stopped at had a real charm, there’s something special about this region that I can’t quite put my finger on yet.
Maybe this is God’s County after all, maybe the Yorkshire folk were right all along.
