26th December 2007 – Settle to Malham to Settle Loop – 13 Miles and circa 1500 ft of climb
Ordinance Survey Route
So Boxing Day morning, its 9 o’clock, I’m up and about in the Stolly household (but nobody else is) and it looks a fine morning for a run. Well, when I say fine, it’s actually cloudly on the tops, slightly chilly and its raining. I’ve only recently moved to Settle so I decide on a new run off the cuff, have a quick check of the map to suss out the route I plan to take and I’m off.
My half way target, which I’d guessed would take about an hour, was the road out of Malham above Malham Cove. Once there I could then loop back on a track a little further up that road that heads back west to Langcliffe before I then have to swerve to the left (south) back to Settle.
The starting point was the footpath south west then north east through the fields accessed from road, just down Ingfield Lane behind the Falcon Hotel - SD818632. This path pretty much immediately hits you with a sharp (but runnable) climb up onto the ridge and leads on to the Pennine Bridleway which I then followed north. I crossed the Settle to Kirkby Malham road (Lambert Lane) at the top and followed Stockdale Lane in a north easterly direction that again becomes the Pennine Bridleway to Malham.
Stockdale Lane is tarmac until its gets beyond Stockdale Farm but then becomes off road all the way to Malham; it all seems a gradual up hill climb too but nothing too challenging. I'd estimate that the total climb out of Settle to the highest point just before Malham to be about 1250 feet. You do reach the point though where you are in the middle of nowhere, on your tod, on exposed moor land (kind of reminiscent of the opening scene in American Werewolf in London with the cloud down) and the wind, pretty un-noticeable before, definitely picked up here. All in all it was becoming a good trot though and I reached Malham after at SD892640 pretty much exactly one hour of running – a good view of the Cove too, as I sprinted down the descent here to the road.
I then ran up the road for maybe 500 metres before taking the Langcliffe track on my left at SD887648. This track seemed well used by farm vehicles was almost a gravely road in places so it didn’t much count as fell running to me but it eventually turned into grass, rocks and mud after a couple of miles or so.
Here though I did hit a painful problem – I was now running directly into the wind and it was increasingly chilly. Nothing my gloves, hat and tops couldn’t cope with but my shorts definitely couldn’t cope and things ‘down below’ got numbingly cold. Eventually I had to run with my gloved hand cupping the area (a la Michael Jackson) to shield my frozen <turn away now ladies> willy from the biting wind. Where are the thermal pants when you need them!
Anyway that helped a lot and eventually I hit the fell above Langcliffe at SD837654 feeling a lot better with a choice of routes before me – either west and then south back to Settle or south then west. I chose the latter, swerving to the right at SD838642 which gave me a humdinger of a descent down into Settle for the finish.
All in all a good run albeit with tame terrain, maybe 1500 feet or so of runnable climb altogether with the distance measured afterwards with my trusty piece of string to be almost exactly 13 miles give or take. My time was 2 hours and 4 minutes. Oh and I broke in my brand spanking new Walshes which were a dream with no rubbing or blisters or anything.
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