Do it for the glory!
Climbing Malham Cove, all 420 steps up to the top
Readers, hello! I’m a day late this week, but, y’know, school holidays. I’m also just back from a massively fruitful blackberry picking expedition. We were out less than an hour and walked just a one-mile round-trip and picked almost a kilo!
The bramble bushes are bursting with blackberries this year, perhaps due to the all the sunshine we’ve had this summer. I also picked a grand total of three apples off the tree in the garden, so it’s blackberry and apple crumble for pudding this week.
Anyway, we had a brilliant adventure to Malham Cove a couple of weeks ago, so I thought I’d share it with you. Have you been? Let me know in the comments if you like the sound of it.
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This weeks’ adventure… Malham Cove
Malham Cove is a towering, 70m high rockface in the Yorkshire Dales, which is super dramatic and offers breathtaking views if you climb to the top (more on that later).
It’s also been a source of inspiration for authors, poets, artists and film-makers for centuries, and you might recognise it from the seventh Harry Potter film, The Deathly hallows (OF COURSE Potter would come into this somewhere!)
Nestled in the Yorkshire countryside you follow a winding road to get to the visitor centre car park, where there are toilets and a shop and information centre, as well as plenty of signs explaining the walking route.
We just went to the Cove, but if you don’t have little ones with you then you can add in a trek to Janet’s Foss waterfall, scene of many a school trip and Scouts outing if you live in this neck of the woods.
The path to the Cove leads through Malham village and past plenty of tearooms and pubs, giving you something to look forward to on the way back down. This is the countryside so you’ll need sturdy shoes as the terrain gets a little uneven once you start to approach the rockface.
Thousands of years ago this was a thundering, glacial waterfall, but now the water runs mostly underground. However there are plenty of boulders and small streams to cross if you want to touch the cliff face.
Getting to the top of the cliff - essential if you want to live the Potter life and pretend you’re camping on the cracked limestone pavement and hunting for Voldemort (which obv we were in the market for) - requires a trek up 420 (we counted them) steps, taking you to the top.
When we considered this ascent it was windy, raining and the climb looked unappetising. ‘Mummy, I want the glory but I don’t want to get soaked’ was my 9yo’s assessment.
We went for the glory.
A sweaty climb later we were rewarded with stunning views across the Dales and a big sense of achievement. Be warned, the footing at the top is extremely uneven, so if you’ve got small kids with you or your mobility is limited then you might want to take extra care.
I was also beset with anxiety by overseas tourists taking extremely risky selfies (please don’t fall off!), but it gave us all such a buzz to look back and know we’d made it to the top.
We then had a lovely pub lunch by a roaring fire (yes it was July but it was also raining) before setting off home.
This is a lovely walk in a gorgeous setting, about a 1hr 20min drive from our home in Bolton. Great for stretching your legs with lots of options for longer or shorter routes, fine for dogs, there’s a proper car park and toilets and the buzz of getting to the top of the Cove is a lot of fun. Plus there’s a Potter connection if that helps you to persuade any doubtful participants.
Go for the glory friends, you won’t regret it!
That’s it from me for a couple of weeks, see you on the other side when school’s back.
Thanks as ever for reading this far, my fave reader is you, for sure.
Jenna