Breathless Hikers

It’s been a while since I’ve done a decent walk.  The last few weeks have been rather boozy with all the birthday celebrations.  We dusted off our walking boots and decided to do the next section of the Welcome Way. 

It was like a tour of the English countryside to look at posh people’s homes.  As Louise put it, “you can smell the money out here”.  We started in Ben Rhydding and followed the path to Burley in Wharfedale.  It was a nice pleasant stretch of the walk. We did walk past an amazing retirement village, Louise, Rachel and I decided that’s where we want to check in when we are older, however, we’d probably have to change the blog to be an only fans account instead to pay for it. 

We had a quick stop in Burley in Wharfedale before continuing onwards.  The village was very cute and they also have a community orchard which had plenty of fruit in the trees. It was nice countryside walking for a large section of this walk, but then the rain started.  This became a familiar theme from mile 4 onwards.  The rain made the air very oppressive and humid.  It didn’t make for good walking to be honest.

Eventually we came to Hawksworth Moor which led us to Burley Moor and some fresh air. 

We had our first bit of heavy rain up on the exposed moor, but thankfully it blew over fairly quickly.  I do like the moor and they are even prettier at the moment as the heather is flowering.

We picked up the Millennium Way at Lanshaw rocks and followed the path down the moor.  Despite how many times I’ve walked on Burley Moor I’ve never come down off the Moor in the direction.  We did manage to take the wrong path at some point coming off the Moor and ended up having to do some road walking to get us back on track.

We got to Eldwick and the rain came down, rather heavily.  As the rain had been off and on all day I made a call not to put on my waterproof trousers (this was the wrong decision!) and carry on as we had about 2 miles left of the walk at this point.  This may have been the longest 2 miles of the trip.  Rachel got mardy, turns out she doesn’t like the rain.  I sung rain songs, and by this point my knickers were wet.  

I think we were all thankful to get back to the car. 

The walk came in at 12.29 miles on my watch but the Hiiker app shows it as 11.28 miles.  It was probably my favourite section of the Welcome Way so far despite the rain.

http://hiiker.app/maps/planned-trails/welcome-way-day-2–596462