The Dales Way is an 84-mile (135 km) Long Distance Footpath in Northern England, from (south east to north west) Ilkley, West Yorkshire to Bowness-on-Windermere, Cumbria.
The Dales Way passes through two National Parks: the Yorkshire Dales National Park and the Lake District National Park. The first half of the walk follows the River Wharfe upstream to the main watershed of northern England at Ribblehead. The second half follows several river valleys (Dentdale, River Mint, River Kent) to descend to the shores of Windermere.
Every year Paul meets up with several of his friends and does a few days walking with them, this year they had an unexpected guest – one of the guys father. Rex was 76 but quite happy walking 24 miles in torrential rain along with the rest of us, perhaps happy is not the correct word – he tolerated it along with the rest of us.
The walk, in good weather would be fantastic as it follows rivers for a lot of the way, cuts over the Pennine Way and passes lovely Abbeys, unfortunately for us it was torrential rain for 4 days and on the last day the sun eventually came through but this was the shortest day anyway! I guess we always had a warm pub at the end of the day with good real ales, great food and good company.
I guess the main reason is catching up with friends not the weather but there has been some tentative discussions about walking in Majorca next time!
Paul is going to do a few long walls this summer with his brother Jonathan and nephew Tommi. The first will be a 26 mile through the Cheviots, the next will be the Yorkshire Three Peaks Challenge, after this Ben Nevis, Scafell Pike and Snowdon with a view to doing the Three Peaks Challenge next year
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