Читать книгу The Dales Way. From Ilkley to the Lake District through the Yorkshire Dales онлайн

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The Way sets off through the upper valley of the River Wharfe, soon leaving behind the urban setting of Ilkley, and not reaching a town of any note until Grassington, and even that is essentially a large village rather than a town. The section from Addingham to the source confluence at Beckermonds is known as Upper Wharfedale and is characterised by small, isolated settlements, of some antiquity. Beyond Buckden, the ongoing valley is known as Langstrothdale through which the Wharfe continues to its end at the confluence of Oughtershaw Beck and Green Field Beck, at which point purists will argue that the source of the Wharfe is not this confluence, but the highest point of either of those becks…and they are welcome to try to find it!

Beyond Beckermonds and the hamlet of Oughtershaw, little remains apart from scattered farms as the route climbs to meet the Pennine Way and a Roman road high on Cam Fell. A brief hiatus ensues as the Way crosses into the head of Dentdale, and a far more wooded landscape largely following not the River Dent, as might be expected, but the River Dee.