A lovely walk was planned today on the far western edge of the Dales, actually bridging onto Cumbria. Our driver’s biggest challenge was to find a route that would cross the last leg of the Tour de Yorkshire, which was going to run straight through Grassington. Oh well, we’ll revisit this lovely town on another visit!

We drove along the upper edge of the Yorkshire Dales National Park and then headed south to Sedbergh, which would serve as our base for the day. This town houses a lovely independent school, where many students passed us on the street on the way to chapel.

Anyway, back to the walk. We went up from the car park through the Main Street to get to our route. Driving into town we noticed that Sedbergh was known as a “Book” town. This corner stop is a fine indication of the town’s love of books.

There was even a charity shop that devoted all of its wares to books!

We soon turned off the Main Street to get to the public footpath taking up the Winder (Small mountain, big hill…you pick). Winder is the most accessible of the Howgills which are a bridge between the Cumbrian and Pennine mountains. Here was our first look.

Our route took us right through a farm, and up the mountainside through multiple sheep pastures.

As we climbed, the scenery was breathtaking!

Dan thought we were skirting the “mountain” so was not prepared for the climb that we did!

We rose above the dale and into the moorland. Lots more climbing…

And we were finally at the top of Winder. It was particularly significant to Gwen as her maiden name is Winder, with relatives from Yorkshire!

Here we see Lairdie Winder surveying her lands!

At the top of the “hill” we could see the Lake District, and perhaps in the distance there was Scaffold Pike!

But the weather is starting to turn! Time we got off of the “hill”!

Our walk off Winder was no less spectacular. Furthermore we have a wonderful woodland dale walk that followed!

The wild blue bells together with the wild garlic were incredible!

We soon found a lovely shore by the river Rawthey for our lunch!

What you can’t make out is the tee box on the golf course across the way! Not sure what hole they are p0laying, but they sure are more polite than we are at home!

As we came along a field we had full view of Winder. What a lovely site…especially from the finish end of the trek!

We soon came into the town and walked through the independent school of Sedbergh. Lovely campus with stately buildings. Just beautiful!

Our walk was soon over and we returned to the car. We took exciting backroutes back to Richmond across the moors of West Yorkshire …many time stopping to wait for cars to pass us along this one lane route. We crossed sheep (cattle style) gates on the road and travelled through Keld, then onto more familiar paths through Thwaite, Muker, and Grinton, where they were holding a blessing of the sheep service as we passed through!

As we approached Richmond we decided to pull over and enjoy an isotonic drink at a community owed pub called the George and Dragon! This pub is actually managed by a Canadian woman from Toronto!!!

Once our throats were rehydrated we headed back to our home base in Richmond and made our supper! Tomorrow will be our last full day in England and is forecast to be rather rainy…. lets see what tomorrow will bring! Until then!