Yorkshire Dales Walks
Ingleborough
Date: 9th April 2004
Distance: 9.1 miles
Ascent: 2232 feet
Time: Too long ago to remember!
With: Matt
Start Grid Ref: SD746692
Walk Summary:
My first visit to Ingleborough was in quite poor weather though it wasn't bad enough to put me off hill walking.
Route Summary: Clapham - Clapdale Drive - Trow Gill - Little Ingleborough - Ingleborough - Little Ingleborough - Newby Moss - Newby Cote - Clapham
Walk Detail: For our first practise ‘peak’ we chose Ingleborough on what turned out to be a particularly unpleasant day of weather.
After an initial wrong turn we went through Trow Gill before hitting the low cloud and wind. It was in Trow Gill that I took my only photo of the walk, now long since deleted, the thumbnail above being the first picture (and not very good picture) I took of Ingleborough a few days later when we climbed Pen-y-Ghent. As a result we completely missed Gaping Gill which considering the weather conditions may not have been a bad thing. The non- existent visibility, strong wind and spray from the cloud was a new experience for me.
The climb on to Little Ingleborough seemed to go on forever, this was partly down to the fact that we could not see anything more than ten feet in front and behind us. Eventually we reached the summit plateau and probably only found the trig point thanks to Matt’s new GPS.
It was a strange experience with other walkers (and two cyclists!!) looming out of the fog. We nearly took the path down to Chapel-le-Dale by accident (GPS isn’t always perfect) before finding our way back to the top of Little Ingleborough.
It was here that the brave decision to orienteer in terrible weather across Newby Moss without a visible path to follow. Small shake holes loomed out of the fog looking like huge ravines all in all it was very disorientating. Once again thanks to Matt's GPS we somehow reached the target corner of a wall we were aiming for from a couple of miles away.
We were so unprepared for this walk that looking back on it I'm almost ashamed of myself - we did not even have any waterproofs. I was soaked through, there had been nothing to see but I think we would both agree that the spooky ascent will probably stick in the mind longer than many other walks.
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