Getting to the Start of a Walk across the Yorkshire Dales

It has become an annual tradition to walk with two friends for a few days somewhere in the north of England.

This year, the hike takes us in a generally eastern direction across the Yorkshire Dales.

The inspiration for our trans-Dales walk came from a blog post a friend found.

I emailed the blog author to ask if he would share his GPS tracks. He generously converted the tracks to GPX format before sending the files to me.

I layered the tracks on to a digital map, then truncated the blog author’s five-day hike to create a three-day hike.

I modified the route, based upon the availability of bed and breakfasts along the way.

Today we took a country train to the start of our walk, the village of Horton-in-Ribblesdale.

We checked into Broad Croft House, a comfortable bed and breakfast. The Dutch owner used to manage five-star hotels around the world.

For dinner, we walked through an ancient churchyard (pictured at the top of this post) to the Golden Lion pub for a distinctly British meal. (It was good.)

Tomorrow we start walking east. A couple days later, we’ll complete the hike in the town of Ripon. From there, we’ll ride a scheduled bus to a mainline train station (Leeds).