A North Pennines spectacle

Last Sunday’s hike took me to the North Pennines, an area I’ve seldom visited. I had to work on Saturday but afterwards I took the train into Leeds and then on to Harrogate and was met by my good friend and old work colleague, Victoria.

The plan was to dump the car at her home in Ripon and then she would show me the delights of its numerous watering holes. A fun evening then ensued which ended with food and a bottle of wine before retiring for the evening knowing we had an early start in the morning.

Alarms were set for 6.30am and we both woke feeling a tad delicate but both spurred on with the prospects of a good day’s hiking ahead.

The journey time to our starting point was just over one and a quarter hours. Our route took us up the A1(M) and a cheeky stop for snacks at a farm shop on the A66, crossing the County Durham/Cumbria boundary, passing through the charming market town of Appleby and following a minor road to the starting point, a free car park in the village of Dufton.  From here we were to start our hike up to the amazing High Cup Nick, a breathtaking natural feature of the northern Pennines, often referred to as the ‘Grand Canyon of the North’ and which had been on my bucket list for some time.

The route I had decided to follow had recommended not parking in the car park but to follow the road out of the village until reaching the end of the tarmac road, cutting out three quarters of a miles of road walking. I’m glad we had opted to ignore this advice as walking through the village was really quite delightful, many interesting old buildings and swallows, swifts and house martins were all busy going about their business, the latter busy building their mud cup nests under the eaves of a number of buildings. The final stretch to the end of the road, despite being quite steep was awash with the golden colour of gorse in full bloom. The decision to park at the village and walk up to the end of the road was definitely the correct one.

The route from the village and for the rest of the walk followed the Pennine Way and up into beautiful moorland. The conditions were warm but quite overcast so we were not optimistic for the best of views once at our destination.   The usual upland birds were present, meadow pipit, skylark and curlew, which are always a delight to see and hear, made special all the more considering all these species are either listed red or amber on the British Trust for Ornithology’s Birds of Conservation Concern list: https://www.bto.org/sites/default/files/publications/bocc-5-a5-4pp-single-pages.pdf

The majority of the route was pretty straight forward and not particularly challenging and now and again you got tantalising glimpses of the natural wonder that is High Cup Nick, formed during the last ice age, around 20,000 years ago, this area lay under a huge ice sheet in which ice and meltwaters carved out this typical U-shaped valley, also known as High Cup Gill.

Considering the warm and dry conditions, we didn’t really bump into many fellow hikers and when we reached the top of High Cup Nick, there was surprisingly few people about and the haze had also cleared in the ‘nick’ of time (sorry 😉).

This was a truly jaw dropping moment! Of course I had seen many photos of this natural wonder but nothing quite prepares you for actually seeing it for real. The vista was indeed spectacular and we sat down looking down into the vast chasm and towards the Eden valley and the Lake District beyond. It’s moments like this that make you feel glad to be alive, troubles, stresses and the badness of the world are washed away.

We lunched at the top and took a number of photographs (and a few posing ones too) then retraced our steps back to the village, opting for the easier up/down route as opposed to the longer circular route. The sun broke through for our descent which was very pleasant indeed and we were thankful it was not as hot on the journey up.

This walk, in the remote east of Cumbria was a welcome change to my usual choice of walks in the more central areas of the county, often within the Lake District and I definitely will be returning soon to discover more of this area. I would highly recommend a visit to the area if you’re not familiar with it, you won’t regret it.