Return to Yorkshire to walk the Dales Way

[SusanSeattle]

A couple of years ago, my family went to the UK and spent several days in Yorkshire. We did one short walk out of Grassington, and since then I've wanted to return to go on a long distance trail. I now have the chance to go with a friend next summer to do the Dales Way. It's my second long distance walk in the UK (after the Cotswold way) and her first. I'll be arriving from France and she'll be flying over from Seattle. We both plan to fly into Manchester and then train to Ilkley, where we'll meet.

We are still planning out our route, but right now it looks like:
Ilkley to Burnsall to Hubberlhome to Dent to Sedbergh (Malabar) to Burnside to Bowness

We will be using a service to transport our luggage, so will just be carrying daypacks. I would love to get suggestions for b&b's, hotels, restaurants along the way.

We end in Bowness but would like to take public transport to somewhere else in the Lake district for a couple of nights after our walk. Any suggestions for us?

After we're done, we will take the train back to Manchester for a final night before we fly home. I would love a couple of restaurant suggestions and an idea of an area to walk around.

Susan
p.s. I posted this over on Fodors as well.

 

[Kathy]

Hi Susan,

I don't know this walk, but it looks like it's through similar countryside to what we've done on the Coast-to-Coast walk, a bit further north I think You'll enjoy the differences between the Lake District and the Yorkshire Dales.

I'm glad you're doing this walk and look forward to hearing about it! One day maybe we can do a long-distance walk together.

Kathy

 

[SusanSeattle]

Yes, I'm excited to finally be doing another walk. I'm now meeting up with my friend Kirsten in London & we'll train up together. This will be after the Alsace trip in June. I am looking forward to going back to Yorkshire & to finally seeing a bit of the Lake district. We're finding that the area is more remote than the Cotswolds so it's a little difficult to find places to stay. We may end up staying 2 nights at one location & using a taxi to get to the start of the day's walk.

I would love to do a long distance walk with you in the future! My youngest graduates in 2019, so I'm closer to having a more open schedule.

 

[Kathy]

I'm sure you've done this, but are you getting ideas from the Dales Way website for accommodations? I looked at the SherpaVan website, and they cover the Dales Way. Have you looked at their accommodations listing to identify some places to stay? I think they can even book accommodations for you, in addition to luggage transfer.

We stayed at some pretty remote places on the C2C and last year on Offa's Dyke, sometimes walking a ways off the trail to get to where we were to stay. The British B&Bs are pretty interesting... sometimes a spare bedroom in someone's home and breakfast served in their kitchen. We've even had a shared bathroom once or twice. I do enjoy the interaction with the owners in these situations, and I figure it's just for one night...

 

[SusanSeattle]

Yes, we have been looking at several places for accommodation ideas. Although we'll use Sherpavan for our luggage, we decided not to use them for accommodation because they don't guarantee a room with twin beds. We don't mind sharing a queen/king bed but a small double would be too small for us to share.

I also like interacting with the owners of these places & the breakfasts are almost always amazing. We found everyone in Yorkshire to be very friendly - not a lot of American tourists there. My husband left his sunglasses in the pub in Grassington & the owner actually brought them back to the b&b we were staying at.

We did find a nice little cottage in Burnsall that we can rent for 2 nights so I'll be able to do my laundry. We may just walk from there to Bolton Abbey and back instead of doing the official start in Ilkley.