Monday 28 June 2021

A Week in The Yorkshire Dales #3 :: Askrigg to Mill Gill Force

Hi there everyone 😀

We are back in The Yorkshire Dales for today's post. It was Monday, we were flying solo and we surprised ourselves ... we did a proper walk ... I guess it was short in the great scheme of things but it was very much off the beaten track and was fairly challenging, for us, in places.

As the weather forecast looked fairly reasonable we decided we’d do the walk from Askrigg village, where we are staying, to Mill Gill Force for what was becoming our daily waterfall fix.

Askrigg is a really pretty little village with a shop that sells all sorts ...
... a few pubs, a cafe, a gift shop and St Oswald's church ...

Our walk started from the church and took us down Mill Lane to the right of the church yard ...

At the bottom of the lane we took the public footpath ...
... through the meadow of buttercups ...

On the opposite side of the meadow we entered into some woodland by the derelict old worsted mill, which was just beautiful and fascinating ...

We passed beneath the zinc launder or trough ...

... and then we were at the river ...

It really was a beautiful little spot ...
... and the light rain shower we were hit with didn't detract from how lovely it was at all ...
We headed right, alongside the river, through the woodland ...
... following some wonky old railings ...
... which led us to a pretty little footbridge to take us across the river ...
We had to stop on the bridge to admire the views ...
... both downstream back towards the mill ...
... and upstream ... both were just beautiful ...
We'd barely started the walk but we were both already in awe of just how lovely it was to be back out in the real countryside ... we've both missed it so much.

We were finally ready to move on and crossed the river ...
We came through the small gate and out into open countryside ...
... but could see exactly where we needed to head ...
Following all the rain we'd had everything was so lush and green ...
We were soon through another little gate and back into woodland ...

The footpath took us alongside the old stone wall at the top of the valley ...
We could see the river below and the woodland floor was absolutely covered with wild garlic ...

We met the first other people that we’d seen at this knobbly tree and stopped to pass the time of day ...
... before continuing alongside the old stone wall ...
... and the river below ...

The view over the wall was pretty impressive too ... 

After what seemed like a fair walk we found the turn off for the waterfall ...
We headed down the path to the right ... we could tell we didn't have far to go as we could hear the sound of thundering of the water ...
After a short walk we caught our first glimpse of Mill Gill Force ...
We weren't disappointed ... it was spectacular, the best we’d seen so far by a country mile ...
It really was magical and I clambered down to get plenty of shots ...


We stayed a while and got a couple of rubbish selfies ...

... before heading back to the main path ... not being able to resist one last shot before we left the waterfall behind ...
Back at the main path we had a bit of deliberation ...

Our plan had been to about turn and make our way back the way we had come, but we decided to carry on and turn it into a circular route.

We carried on towards Whitfield Gill, another waterfall, though we were planning on looping back before we got that far ...
At the top of the woods we continued heading on towards the waterfall ...
We came out of the woods at this point and it was just beautiful ... the sun was shining, there was a bit of blue sky ... this really is God's own country ... 



At this point the stone wall was now to our right and we could still hear the river ... peeking over the wall it seemed we were now pretty much at the top of Mill Gill Force ...

Here we took the path which would take us back to Askrigg ...
... and headed over the narrow wooden bridge back across the river ...
This was a lovely spot and would be fabulous to sit for a while with a picnic ...



We headed on up .. trying not to disturb the sheep and lambs too much ...

We soon hit the farm track which took us to Low Straights Road, which would take us all the way back to the village ... though that was not our plan ...
The footpath that we wanted wasn’t easily obvious and appeared to head through the farmyard and a field ... currently housing cows and calves ... so we decided we would carry along the track a bit further and pick up a later path.

From here we could see exactly where we needed to end up ...

It did look a fair walk, but it was definitely the shorter route, cutting across the fields rather than continuing to the end of the lane.

This one is zoomed in ...

It really was beautiful up here now with plenty of blue sky and sunshine ...

We found the footpath we were aiming for and started to head towards the church ...
... making our way across the fields, scanning the dry stone walls for gates and stiles ...



We passed the odd 'ripe for renovation' along the way ...

Each gated stile brought us a bit closer to the church ...
There was a short pit stop along the way ...

... but eventually we were back where we started ... and thought we’d earned a bit of a treat from the cafe ...

Whilst we’d only actually walked just over two miles ... we both had some seriously aching joints ... but had really enjoyed getting back out there for a proper walk. It had taken us far longer than two miles should, but I'm blaming that on needing to take so many photographs as it was just so lovely.

I would definitely recommend this one if you’re in the area. It was beautiful and lots of interesting things to see along the way 😀

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