Time for the first walk of the year, delayed for various reasons. Having had a look around for a nice walk to start with I came a cross a long walk which mentioned a hidden waterfall. Although the full walk was beyond my walking friend and my own capabilities, a look at the map showed that a 5 miles ish there and back walk would take us up to this watefall. So off we set to Arncliffe in Littondale.
It was a nice drive, first towards Skipton, then up to Grassington past the impressive Kilnsey Crag and then up towards Arncliffe. When we arrived, the first problem was nowhere to park, a narrow road between limestone walls and no laybys. The only place was a camping site so I cheekily asked if I could park there, it was no problem, just a couple of pounds in the charity box, so we parked up and set off.
We didnt know the exact spot we were aiming for but we followed a bridal path heading up towards High Cote moor, a steep climb to start with as the path climbs just to the side of Cote Ghyll, a steep sided valley. I was on the lookout for wild life and was quite surprise to see a pair of Oystercatchers (not many oysters on the moors).
There were hardly any other people up here and it gloriously quiet as we continued upwards, there were several streams on the route up the hills and we kept our ears open for the sound of water, as the instruction was you will here the waterfall rather than see it. The only thing we could here were the sounds of birds and so continued upward. We reach High Cote Moor but no sound of a waterfall, one thing of note we did see was what looked like an arched mine entrance, now filled in, but three arches were visible indicating the downward slope of the mine entrance. A bit of googling when I got home however showed that in fact it was an old lime kiln
We decided to climb further and finally reached Top Lineseed, at this point we decided to call a halt to our outward journey, much further and we would have started descending towards Malham Tarn.
So, having had refreshments, we surveyed the landscape to try and work out where this well and truely hidden waterfall might be. We decided to walk along the top of the hill to see if there were any steep drops, there were several but not waterfalls. So we decided to start on our way back down and try to get nearer to Cote Ghyll, our last chance.
Finally we were rewarded, we could see the line of a stream descending and saw a ledge over a drop, just one problem, there was no water! We tried to imagine the water splashing over cascades and then tumbling over the ledge into a pool below but that was the best we could do. The photo at the top was what it should have looked like, this is what we was
Rather disappointed we made our way by to the main track and followed it back down the hill to our starting point.
Despite not seeing the waterfall it was a lovely walk, quite strenuous for us, a climb of 900 feet on the 2.5 mile outward journey, but the return 2.5 miles were a pleasant downhill stroll. Apart from the Oystercatchers, there were several Meadow Pipits, and a good number of Wheatear, a pretty little bird, several Curlew calling and flying overhead too.
