Strenuous Leader: Julie Distance : 9 ½ miles
We leave Ilkley heading for the tarn and stanz stones to Cow and Calf Rock, we then head through Rocky Valley to head south along the Dales Way to the Twelve Apostles. We will turn to the west past the trig point to Rombalds Moor Woods then turn north to rejoin the Dales Way to make our way back into Ilkley.
Moderate Leader: Dave Distance : 7 miles
We cross the river and walk through the park before climbing some seps to take us through Middleton Woods. We then make are way to Hunger Hill then onto Primrose Hill. We now make are way to Upper Austby. Now we make are way to Austby and through Owler Park woods and along the riverside back to Ilkley. Reasonably flat .
Easy Leader: Laura Distance : 5½ miles
We leave town for the riverside and pick up the Dales Way upstream on the River Wharfe to Low Mill Village. We carry on to the outskirts of Addingham where cross the river over a suspension foot bridge. We make our return journey to Ilkley via Nesfield and Owler Park. We pick up the riverside paths again as we arrive in Ilkley.
There are about five stiles, mixed tracks, quiet country lanes and meadows. There is a steady ascent before we reach Nesfield and again from the river to the centre of town. It is muddy in the woods near Owler Park. Expect to walk through sheep and poultry. Gaiters and walking poles would be useful on the return leg.
NOTES ON THE AREA
Ilkley is the highest town on the River Wharfe and provides the perfect stepping stone between the industrial townships downstream and the joys of the Yorkshire Dales immediately upstream. Travelling up the Wharfe, it is only on reaching Ilkley that the enclosing hills first show their more serious intentions, and none more so than the world-famous Ilkley Moor rising steeply to the south of the town. Its breezy heather heights are in fact only a modest tract of the extensive, all embracing Rombalds Moor which boasts a wealth of antiquity in stone, with circles, cairns and carvings. Also above the town are the Cow and Calf Rocks, the Tarn and Hebers Gyhyll, all being popular local haunts.
Although Ilkley’s origins are far earlier, it is best known as the Roman Olicana and for some superb Anglian crosses, now inside the Parish Church. Alongside the church is the attractive Manor House, now serving as a museum. Ilkley’s real growth came with the railway, and its humble pretentions to being a spa resort. To this day it has attracted wealth in the form of businessmen seeking a haven from city workplaces and people set for relaxing retirement amidst invigorating air.
White Wells was built as a small bath house in the 1760s by Squire Middleton of Ilkley. The buildings date from the 18th century and include bath houses built to use the intensely cold and invigorating spring water of the Great Spaw, or spa, for hydropathic treatment. One bath can still be used and is particularly popular on New Year’s Day and Yorkshire Day, which1st August. Alternative forms of refreshment are provided by the old drinking fountain next to the building, or by the café inside which opens, whenever the flags are flying, which is on most school holidays, and weekends throughout the year. The view from the terrace includes the former hydro of Wells House, built to cater for the burgeoning interest in the water cure. Among its guests was Charles Darwin, who came here on completing The Origin of Species in 1859. He would have ridden a donkey up to the bathhouse for treatment.
Most of the stone to build Ilkley came out of the huge hole of Hangingstones Quarry, which now forms a strangely beautiful landscape. Above the far end, the rock surface beneath your feet has been smoothed flat under the pressure of ice, and grooved by stones frozen into the glacier sliding over it. The sharp end of the Hangingstones Ridge is called Crocodiles Head and is poised above the abyss of Backstone Beck. The gorge has been cut along a fault plane where the rock has been weakened and shattered, but a waterfall has formed where a harder, less yielding layer of rock runs across it. The fault has separated the Hangingstones block from the main body of the moorland above.