Hello All,
I will be hiking in August and I wondered if any of you have travelled to Malham, Askrigg or Hawes to use one of these towns as a base for daily hikes?
What about Grassington or Grasmere?
I won’t be driving so will have to rely on local trains and buses.
I would appreciate any advice on making good choices for a 3-4 day stay in the area.
If you had good luck with a particular B&B I would also be very interested in hearing what you would recommend.
Thanks very much, J
If we are talking Yorkshire then Grasmere is in Cumbria. So it would be a good base to walk the Lake District, but not the Yorkshire Dales.
Malham only has buses from a railhead at Skipton twice a day on Monday, Wednesday, Friday and Saturday plus an hourly bus on A Sunday. So I think that is a bit limiting.
Hawes or Askrigg would both be good bases- train to Garsdale, then the Little White Bus to Hawes, change for the more frequent LWB down dale to Leyburn.
In terms of frequency of service Grassington (from Skipton) is your best bet.
At this stage the bigger question is availability of B and B's in Hawes, Askrigg or Grassington. That may determine your choice.
All local bus times are here- https://www.dalesbus.org/
I reckon Settle might be a decent pick.
Malham is day walkable from there.
The trains will give you access to Ingleton for the Waterfalls walk and Ingleborough ,one of the 3 Peaks of Yorkshire.
Or you can jump up to Horton in Ribblesdale for Pen y ghent, or Ribblehead for Whernside.
If you are really keen its about an 11 hour hike to do all three in a day,a decent level of fitness and iron will definatly required, it feels a long long way back to Horton ,the usual start point.
Another option might be to do a few days on the Pennine Way and let a bag courrier take the strain.
Malham to say Tan Hill is a grand 3 or 4 days.
Good morning all,
Thanks for your wonderful detailed suggestions. It really helps with the planning I have left a little too long. I should have started here.
For those wondering why I have chosen Horwich Parkway area near Bolton to stay, my grandparents were from Bolton and I have never been. I hope to look up some history and perhaps relatives. This may be just a first scouting trip. Happy travels to all. J
If you're staying at Horwich Parkway I wouldn't split my hotel into Manchester as well. Frequent fast trains from there to Manchester Pic.
A rare example of where redevelopment has really enhanced the area.
My office was round the corner at Watson Steel.
The site of the old, huge, Loco works, where anyone local may well have worked, is betwixt Parkway and the village.
The main road bus from Horwich old tram shed, at the village centre, to Bolton is fast and frequent.
It doesn't look as if Bolton Archives Catalogue is on line. It redirects you to Discovery at The National Archives, which we know is about 10 years or more out of date.
Hopefully you will find Church records there either transcribed or on microfilm. But for more in depth work it looks as if you need to check paper catalogues, then pre order on a 7 day lead time.
So it may well be a scouting visit.
If you’re staying at Horwich Parkway, it’s really easy to pop into Manchester for a few hours by public transport - Horwich is very much Manchester commuter belt.
There’s also some lovely walking up that way - Rivington Pike on Winter Hill.
Hi Jaz -
Richard, my fellow ‘Tyke’ makes some good suggestions, all worth considering.
Malham gets really busy (I drove through there two days ago and it was heaving) but is a good base if you can get to and from it. Gargrave is a five-six mile hike from there with a railway station if you could get to Malham but not get away. Similarly Grassington gets crowded, but again there’s a ton of good walking from there. And has decent transport links.
It will all boil down to where you can get accommodation (Gargrave, although small, boasts a Premier Inn). So you might have to go further afield to get somewhere to stay like Settle and rely on the transportation links to get you in and out. Also it depends on what sort of hiking you want to do. There’s plenty of easy-ish stuff but the Three Peaks of Yorkshire circuit is not for the faint of heart, short of breath or tender of foot. If you can let us know where you manage to end up staying I’m sure we can all weigh in with a choice of hikes from wherever it is.
Hope you get fixed up!
Ian
