Been wanting to do this walk for a while. Real bucket list stuff. I had the pleasure of taking my nephew and introducing him to the art of perambulation. The journey from Lincolnshire was quite long, and we agreed that he would play rap on the way there, and I would play hippy boho retro space raga faery fluff on the way back. It kinda worked out. He was grooving to Mellow Candle and Caravan by the end, so thats a win.
The map below is pretty much exactly the walk we did, although we started from a field to the south of Malham, which had been temporarily turned into a car park. We walked to Janet's Foss where there were a number of people taking the fresh waters of the falls, then walked up to Gordale Scar although we didn't proceed further that way. It was more of a reccie to see what was involved with the rock climbing/ scrambling. It doesn't look too daunting, although I have read differing estimates of its difficulty level online. One for the future maybe. Anyway we returned the way we came then turned right to walk over the tops, via the limestone pavement, then descended to the amphitheatre of Malham Cove. from there the return was very easy along Malham Beck and through the village back to the car.
There are options for future walks. Gordale Scar obviously, but also Malham Tarn, to the north of that taking in the Pennine Way, and several other circular walk permutations. We successfully avoided the rain all day and even though it was the school holidays, there weren't too many people around. A tolerable number I would say. The whole valley was alive with the concert of blossoming limestone flowers, joyous acrobatic birdsong, and the certain knowledge that the apex of an English summer had arrived.
