4th October 2008 - Sharp Haw, Rough Haw and Bardon Moor Loop - 10.5 miles and about 1,850 ft of ascent
This is one of those runs where I've previously run much of the route but never put it all together into one circuit before. The Grassington road north out of Skipton is over looked by Sharp Haw and Rough Haw to the west and Bardon Moor and Embsay Crag to the east. Starting from Embsay Resevoir just below Embsay Crag my route skirts through farmland, crosses the road to go up and along the west ridge line before dropping down and climbing the ridge to the east and following that back to my starting point. What could be easier then?
Before the off I plotted my intended route but, given my willingness to take on the most stupid of short cuts as they present themselves, the route I ended up running was this one
The weather today was cold, windy and wet....... perfect fell running conditions then! And starting from Embsay Resevoir I followed the lane back towards Embsay village before taking the footpath across the fields to None-Go-Bye farm. Nice and easy going through fields in the main and, although the cows there pretty much left me alone, I did have a brief run in with three sheep that started chasing me, probably thinking I was the farmer with some sheepysnacks or something.
After reaching None-Go-Bye, I followed the road for 200 yards back in the direction of Skipton before scooting up Bog Lane towards the track up Sharp haw. Bog Lane er... wasn't boggy at all (it was tarmac) but the trek up to the top of Sharp Haw was, although you wouldn't know it from this picture - Sharp Haw in front to the left and Rough Haw to the right:
Once on top of Sharp Haw I dipped down into the little valley before climbing to the cairn on top of Rough Haw. The main path here passes by Rough Haw going on towards Flasby with nothing much more than a goat track going up Rough Haw but, as every regular runner up Sharp Haw knows, you have to run up Rough Haw too - its obligatory!
Mind you it didn't do me any favours. Once on top I spied a quad bike track heading plum in the direction of the Grassington Road down in the valley below me. Unfortunately there was no path down to it but, hey ho, I hacked through bracken, swamps, tussocks and boulder fields to get down only to find that this quad bike trail led me to.... more bracken, tussocks and swamps. All the same I took as best as I could guess an 'as the crow flies' line through it all and finally came through to the road - I did get a couple of nasty cuts to my lower left shin mind from what were tussocks of razor sharp grass (sedge grass?); in fact it was bleeding quite impressively, if I say so myself.
This part of the short cut so far though wasn't the problem, the road I now found myself on was. I was about a mile south of my path up to Barden Moor and the road here isn't that wide, has no paths alongside it but does have a shed load of traffic whizzing past in both directions at 60 plus miles per hour! My planned route would have been far, far more sensible than this 'short' cut. Fortunately I wasn't run over running up here and made it to the track that climbs up to Bardon Moor below Rylstone Cross:
Incidentally there were three cows in this field; a mummy cow, a calf and what may have been a bull (the bigger brown smudge in the middle of the picture). None of them batted an eye though as I ran past.
Once up on the ridge its a gloriously boggy and rocky run all the way back to Embsay Resevoir, all on a path I know well with nothing off piste and no more cows. The view of SH and RH and my route down from them (pretty much disecting the picture down the middle) taken from the Bardon Moor ridge:
A really enjoyable run all told with lots of exciting adventures and long short cuts thrown in. 1 hour and 53 minutes start to finish.
Reply With Quote