Panoramic views at Penhill
Walk Summary
Start Point: West Witton
Walk Guide /Map references OS Explorer OL30 & Collins Ramblers > Yorkshire Dales, David Leather
Distance: 7.5 miles
Highlights: Awesome Views from Penhill
Wildlife spotted: Shrew, Curlew (plus Chick), Swift, Swallow, House Martin, Pied Wagtail, Wheatear, Raven, Kestrel. (Walk is reputed to offer sightings of Peregrine Falcon and Brown Hare too!)
Watering Hole: Fox & Hound - Very quiet on arrival but it's a multi award winning pub with a good range of local ales and real beers
Tipple Tips: Swinithwaite Silver, Yorkshire Dales Brewery - Light and tasty
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CB stealing Rhys Darby's Dance Moves
Here's CB doing some moves that we'd seen in Rhys Darby's show at Leeds Town Hall the previous night...
One Last Walk on Skye (this year anyway!)
The last walk in this Skye Walker Series left me with a souvenir. A black and shiny souvenir... on my bottom! This was the best bruise I've achieved since a snowboarding trip in the three valleys too many moons ago. It came about for the usual reasons: overexcitement and lack of concentration. In case you're feeling nervous about flicking through the consequential photos, don't be. You'll be relieved to hear that I failed to document this rather original memento!
The walk along Waterloo beach, near Broadford offers yet another unique landscape to take in. It's hard to describe as there is such a variety of terrain: patches of grassland full of watery potholes, strange rock formations and more rock pools you can shake a stick at! Oh, and when the tide is out, a sandy beach is uncovered.
This doesn't appear to be a particularly popular walk. Comparatively, it's not a 'classic' walk either, but it is a fascinating one and offers more than enough to keep any walker intrigued!
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Stood Up at Golden Acre Park, Leeds
5am on a Saturday morning in Leeds (sober) is quite a sight. Driving past the station reveals an eclectic mix of people: party goers, big drinkers, workers, deliverers, travellers and me, a photographer in search of some golden light!
I was looking to expand my folio with some garden and flora photographs at Golden Acre Park. Dawn is a great time to photograph plants and flowers, as you get that low, warm coloured light which cuts across the land, casting harsh shadows and exposing patterns normally invisible when the sun is high. Sunrise can also reveal natural wonders, like dew or a frost, which can make the morning's battle to get out of bed all the more worth while. On this occasion however there was no dramatic sunrise or golden bursts of light. It just got light from behind thick cloud.
To say I wasn't slightly miffed by the unrewarding nature of the weather would be a lie! But this was the situation and I had to make do, photographers often dismiss the 'flat' light of a cloudy day, but the soft light can be used just as creatively. I walked around Golden Acre Park and got absorbed in the abundance of beautiful flowers, soon forgetting the disappointment of the sun's no show!
Skye on the road (The Bits in Between)
My last post on our fantastic Skye Walker adventures should be up next week. Here's some photos from the bits in between our walking adventures on the Isle of Skye...
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Skye Serendipity (Last Day, Part One: Loch Coruisk)
Our last day on the Isle of Skye began with a disappointing voicemail. Well actually the day began with an epic struggle to remove ourselves from bed into the shower and out into the car for 7am. Five days of driving, walking, late night card games and excessive biscuit consumption was starting to take it's toll!
We were driving to Elgol where we were booked on a boat for the Isle of Rum: star location in BBC's Autumnwatch series, as well as many other wildlife programmes. Another contributing factor in the mornings' fatigue was a night of hyperactive anticipation at seeing deer, White Tailed and Golden Eagles, otters, ponies, goats and much more! However the bubble of boyish excitement burst about 5 minutes into the drive when CB picked up a voicemail from the skipper warning that the seas were likely to be too rough to sail (or whatever correct term for a boat without sails is?!) out to Rum.
After a particularly stunning drive, we arrived at Elgol with low expectations. Just as well as all charters to the Isle of Rum were cancelled for the day. Not wanting to waste our efforts, we decided to jump on a boat headed for Loch Coruisk.
The boat trip on the Bella Jane was great, we saw a couple of Shags (for those with a similar maturity level to myself, I mean Phalacrocorax aristotelis), a Great Northern Diver (this is a bird) which was a real thrill and plenty of Harbour seals which are always a welcome sight to me!
Once we arrived at Loch Coruisk we had one and half hours to scramble/ ramble. With an estimate time of 3 hours to walk the circumference of the Loch, your options for exploration are a wee bit limited. With hindsight we would've done the longer trip. For anyone considering the walk back to Elgol from Loch Coruisk, consider well, because I saw the 'bad step' section of that walk and I would say 'danger of death step' might be a bit more appropriate! But then, I'm not really known for my love of heights, quite the contrary in fact and apparently in the good ole days herdsmen would walk their sheep and cattle this route.
The area is simply stunning, and it's easy enough to reach some mountaineering-esque viewpoints! After taking it all in and getting over the awesomeness of such rare views (for us anyway) we decided to walk away from the Loch and our rambling shipmates. We happened to stumble upon a beautiful sandy cove (with no footprints!!) it was the most peaceful experience of the holiday by far; until we noticed the time and had to peg it back to the mooring!
Our serendipitous visit to Loch Coruisk was possibly the highlight of the Skye trip and is a real 'must see' for any Skye Walking Jedi!
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Birding at Bempton Cliffs
"Oh we're not real twitchers" protested Mum as she passed one of two telescopes to Dad and placed a spotting scope in her pocket to protect it from the incessant rain! I'm not sure anyone other than 'real' twitchers would have travelled one and a half hours to Bempton Cliffs fully aware that only cold winds and rain awaited their arrival... I say only wind and rain, but actually rather a lot awaited us at the RSPB cliffside reserve, and my noted lack of protest probably serves as a marker on my journey to becoming a 'real twitcher'!
Having passed through the cosy and friendly (only thing missing being a tasty local beer served on tap!) RSPB centre/shop that serves as the entrance, I found myself mesmerised by thousands of sea birds rising and sinking from the sharp line drawn by the cliffs. The wind and rain evaporated (metaphorically speaking, unfortunately) as we watched gannets, fulmars, razor bills and guillemots!
The walking at Bempton Cliffs is relatively easy (in a good way) and captivating. The RSPB also offers guided walks but given my folks' tendency to stop without warning for twenty, thirty minutes at a time meant we thought it best to decline. On one such stoppage, we (Mum) managed to pick out a puffin nesting with her telescope. I should probably point out, being May, (I know, it's August now (!) this post has been on the back burner for a little bit) there were only a few puffins around, so we were thrilled to find one!
This is a great area for a family walk, even in miserable weather! There's also plenty of walking options for those looking for a longer/more challenging ramble too. There is no question that I'll be returning!
It's the norm for me to mention a pint of local ale consumed at the end of my walks, but with my parents being more tea and scone people, I thought I'd refer to another custom equally common to that of a pint. On many of our walks I end up buying CB one of the little RSPB pin badges (found in RSPB centres and all good local pubs); on this occasion I bought her a gannet pin- no reflection on her eating habits, honest.
Day 4 Walking on Skye... Legends of Prometheus & Snow White
It's not hard to find Legend in Skye and everything about the Old Man of Storr feels legendary! Storr is the remnants of an ancient landslip that stands on the Trotternish Peninsula and I don't think there is anywhere else in the world quite like it. I wasn't surprised (but was incredibly excited!) to see the Old Man of Storr hit global cinema screens not only at the beginning of Ridley Scott's epic film Prometheus but also in the equally epic (but not quite as good - but still pretty cool) Snow White and the Huntsman.
Like many of the famous spots on the extraordinary Isle of Skye, The Old Man of Storr is popular and you have to join the conveyor belt of tourists and sight seekers to see it. But don't let this put you off because it really is awesome to stand in the presence of and if you persevere, the higher you ascend the quieter it becomes!
Impromptu Stroll at Armley Mills
Last weekend I visited the Armley Mills Museum to see an exhibition there by Lord Whitney. The exhibition is really cool and well worth checking out, as is the museum itself! In approaching the Armley Mills museum entrance you walk over a bridge that crosses the Leeds and Liverpool canal. This picturesque scene captured my imagination and I was armed with my trusty Canon G11. So on leaving the museum, I took a very short walk along the canal... I couldn't of walked more than a few hundred metres before I had to turn around and rush back to go pick CB up from work; but It's encouraging to see how getting out with a camera for just a short while can spark the imagination and generate some new ideas!
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Skye Walker Part III (The First Bit: Fairy Pools)
Whenever anyone goes away, advice is often given and received rather like Christmas presents. And thus your holiday begins with the pressure of
1. Trying to remember who gave what advice and brewing up interesting anecdotes that illustrate just how useful their advice was.
2. Finding good enough reasons to explain why you were unable to make it to that place they recommended.
While our Daily Mail and Telegraph reading friends warned us of the deep trenches at the side of the roads and obstinate road-dwelling sheep... many of our Guardian reader friends encouraged us:
"You must visit the Fairy Pools when you go to Skye, it's in the Wild Swim book by Kate Rew, have you read it? "
... So here we were, putting on our boots in the car park for the Fairy Pools with the rain pouring down more consistently than the micro climate weather we'd experienced so far; and as yet we hadn't knocked over a sheep or gotten stuck down a trench (phew)!
Our trip to the Fairy Pools occurred on a day of firsts. The morning was marked with my first ever sighting of a cuckoo and in the evening I saw, for the first time, a baked potato explode. If you ever come to use an 'all in one' microwave, oven and grill, be warned!
There are clearly more Guardian readers than Daily Mail readers speculate, as The Fairy Pools are popular! And while popularity is something that can often turn myself (and many other Guardian readers) off a place, the Fairy pools are so awesome it's hard to be put off by anything!
As the rain eased we even managed to find a quiet spot for our packed lunch, out of the way of walking traffic. Although that didn't stop the odd venturer poking their head over the rocks and looking down green eyed at our pretty good picnic spot! Maybe we shouldn't have lunched by the actual pool Kate Rew was photographed in for her book!
Sometimes there are walks where you get so engrossed in the scenery and experience of the place you are walking in, that you end up ditching the planned walk and just dreamily wander around and then wander back. Well Fairy Pools is such a place. This place IS magical!
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