Smardale Gill 290411

After a small breakfast of muesli and yoghurt and then a boiled egg, I left High Chapel House and parked up at Smardale Hall. There is a path through the National Nature Reserve which has pretty flowers but runs along a disused railway track and is quite boring and hard on the feet being Tarmac. You go past the site of the 1955 Smardale crash – apparently they only removed the remains in 2004!  You also go under the Settle Carlisle Smardale viaduct and then you come to the Smardale Gill viaduct which is on the dismantled line. I went round it so as to get better photos. The path off the line is pretty and winds along the beck to Smardale Bridge – a packhorse bridge. Then back up onto the line, over the viaduct itself and back. I liked the bits that were off the line better.

I then drove home, stopping to eat my sandwiches in sight of Wild Boar Fell and the cairns very prominent looking like people on the top.
I stopped in Hawes on the way but too full of motorbikes so left without lingering. I went past Pen-y-Ghent which I climbed on the day that Charles and Di got married and tried to drive through Settle but had to take a longer way round as they were having a street party. They had a street party there for Charles and Di back in 1981 but didn’t shut the road then. One of the Pen-y-Ghent party was craving a steak sandwich and this seemed an unlikely thing to find in the middle of the Dales on a bank holiday but actually she was in luck in Settle 30 years ago. Oh I can’t believe it was that long ago.
I skipped the steak sandwich for this royal wedding and got back with lots of time to prep the next day’s outing.
 
Smardale Gill viaduct
Smardale Gill viaduct
Smardale Bridge
 Please visit Map and Compass and learn how to interpret a map with me and my navigation partner, Cath.

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