Zara and I decided a little while ago that we would walk the Dales Way. This was when the weather was beautiful and walking through the dales had me imagining I was Julia Andrews running through the hills.
Queue reality and we were up early to catch the train to Ilkley which is the official start of the Dales Way. The Dales Way runs from Ilkley to Bowness on Windermere, 81 miles of wandering through the Dales. Due to the weather we realised that it would not be possible to complete the whole route so we decided to complete half of the Dales Way and pick up the second section in the summer holidays.
Our first day was Ilkley to Appletreewick. Supposedly this section should be 12 miles, for some odd reason it took us 14. I still can’t figure out why as we didn’t get lost. Zara navigated the whole route for us and she did an excellent job.
Our first stop off was Addingham and on the way there we encountered lots of pointless kissing gates where the fence was down or none existent. Zara told me that because I hadn’t gone through the gates, I hadn’t completed the route and I was penalised by having an extra 30kg to my pack. This was quite prophetic for day 2.
The walking was easy going and before too long we had reached Bolton Abbey where we stopped for lunch in the tea room. Bolton Abbey was beautiful and it’s been a while since I’ve strolled through there. Zara had a great time in Bolton Abbey and I had to tell her to stop playing in the end as we’d never get to our stop. The strid as always was amazing!
We headed up to Barden bridge through an amazing old wood leaving behind the people at Bolton Abbey.
After leaving Barden bridge we continued following the river up to Appletreewick, which is where we were camping that night.
We had an amazing dinner that evening in the Craven Arms and Zara learnt about the Dambusters and the bouncing bomb as they had a display on the wall.
A great first day on the trail.
http://hiiker.app/maps/planned-trails/dales-way-day-1–69982025
Breathless Hikers 
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