We were sad to say goodbye to Max and Ros. However, Max drove us back to Malham and accompanied us for the first half of our walk, before returning to his car and delivering my rucksack to our eventual destination. We started on the Pennine Way, walking up to Malham Cove which is a huge rocky amphitheatre formed by glaciation. We then scrambled up the path beside the Cove to Malham Tarn.

From the Tarn we diverted from the Pennine Way as I had been unable to book accommodation in Horton in Ribblesdale due to the Three Peaks Challenge occurring this weekend. Instead we followed the Monk’s Way and then the Dale’s Way toward the east of the Pennines. The scenery was still magnificent, but probably some of the steepest climbs so far! We were pleased to finally arrive at our overnight accommodation.

A Backward Glance:

After bidding farewell to Ros, Max joined us again for the first part of today’s trek. Starting out in cool sunny weather, we made our way to Malham Cove on the Middle Craven Fault, a spectacular 230 foot high white limestone smooth cliff face. Thousands of years old, in it’s time it would have been a thunderous waterfall higher than today’s Niagara Horse Shoe Falls at 180 feet. A shelf of flattened smooth boulders greeted us after a long climb up stone steps tracing almost as vertically one edge of the precipice. A beautiful creation by huge amounts of water and time, now a balmy popular picnic spot for strange tiny visitors during a brief interlude of it’s 12000 year history. On the way up we met Amy who was walking the Pennine Way and whose company we enjoyed until our paths forked at Malham Tarn. Then after climbing East away from The Way we crossed its crest and continued on a gentle descent to a lunch stop just before a steeper drop into a river valley. After lunch we bade farewell to our good friend and set our sights on The Falcon Inn where we enjoyed a long drink before scaling the opposite side of the valley then down to another river where we walked it’s flat grassy bank West for about two miles to Buck Inn, bath, meal and bed zzzzzzzzz.