Ingleborough, Yorkshire Dales

How was your weekend? We celebrated my best friend's birthday with a 18km circular hike up to Ingleborough, the second highest mountain in the beautiful Yorkshire Dales.

We parked the car and started our walk in the pretty village of Clapham. Clapham has a good sized National Park carpark (pay and display) and clean public toilets and a couple of nice pubs.

Clapham Beck

The entrance to Ingleborough cave

Arriving at Trow Gill

Horrifically we had to clamber past a very ripe dead sheep. Not for the faint-hearted!

The rocks were a bit slippy from the rain

The footpath towards the Gaping Gill.

Gaping Gill

Twice a year there is a chance to be winched down to the bottom of the cave

Then its all uphill to Little Ingleborough

with its beautiful views

and wonderful wide open spaces

Unfortunately we don't have a picture of the peak as within a few minutes we were enveloped by a cloud and it looked pretty much like this! I must say it was a bit scary as well as being tremendously windy. We did find the trig point and sat for 2 minutes in the cross shaped shelter

After some dithering we found the correct path down (heading towards Horton) and eventually reached the rather impressive limestone pavements.

I've not seen anything like this before - the pavements are about shoulder height and cover a huge area of ground. 

rather like thousands of giant teeth 

Pretty wild flowers

Moughton Scar with Pen-y-ghent behind 

Kms of dry stone walling

A very welcome sight only 3.5 miles to go

1/4 mile to Clapham and still smiling 

The barman took one look at us and said "just climbed a mountain?". The most delicious coke in the world - with plenty of ice and a sauvignon blanc for the birthday girl.