Walk Report: Victoria Cave

Key to symbols:
= Trig Point

This was the second walk of the week, taking advantage of my training course. I headed further afield this time, for a shorter walk in the Yorkshire Dales. I was conscious I had to be home by 16:00 in time for the course, so ended up cutting the walk short, but this resulted in a nice surprise.

Fortunately I wasn’t planning on walking through this fied, where the painted letters on the wall warned of a “mad bull”. The heavily barbed wire fence leant some credence to this warning too.

I’d walked this route in 2006 with a friend and it was absolutely gorgeous. I’d skipped the stiff climb and scramble up to the trig point on Warrendale Knotts though, so here was my opportunity to put that to rights. The trig point is actually called Langcliffe for some reason, despite that village being some distance away. The path is green and clear and only a little slippery.

The ladder stile is nicely placed to provide access to the trig point. These walls are well built and most of them have the alternating posts supporting them with a couple of courses of wire across the top, which makes them very tricky to get over without the help of a stile. Not impossible, but the risk of tumbling them generally puts me off scaling them unless it’s absolutely necessary.

The view across to Attermire Scar from the trig point on Warrendale Knotts. This place is so close to Settle that you would expect it to be bustling with folk, even on a cold and miserable day like today – but blissfully I had it all to myself. I couldn’t see another soul and I looked long and hard to find one.

Making my own path from the trig point back to the established track. Victoria Cave is a huge hole in the hillside ahead, the path running beside the wall situated below it.

Jubilee Cave is just a little further along the same path from Victoria Cave. Both look very enticing, but without the right equipment I didn’t venture more than a few feet into the entrances.

A lonely tree amongst the limestone pavement.

Catrigg Force waterfall. It’s actually much more impressive than this picture suggests.

The Craven Heifer in Stainforth. I was going to stop for a quick half, but it seems the landlord had requested other walkers to leave packs outside and boots in the porch. Well as much as I wanted a half, I didn’t want to have to get undressed to drink it.

I decided to play safe at this point and rather than the 5 mile loop back I had planned, I settled for my fall back plan of a direct return to Settle following the railway line. This led to a very pleasant surprise at Craven Lime Works.

I had no idea this was here. Its an area of old lime workings with lots of old buildings and materials, restored and incorporated into a sort of theme park. This is the Hoffman Kiln where the lime was extracted from ore. It looks impressive from the outside. It looks even more impressive inside!

Inside the Hoffman Kiln. I guess about 100 yards long with doors off to the right every few yards.

Evidence of the lime that was extraced here. It is still dripping from the ceiling in stalagtites.

The Hoffman kiln from the outside.

Waller working in a field on the way back to Settle.

Final little climb before the descent back into Settle.