From Lockton I followed the road east to the A69. Here right of way crosses a field and goes into some woods where it becomes a proper path down through the woods into Staindale. The woods were lovely, with lesser celandine ubiquitously in flower. At Staindale Lodge there’s no right of way straight past the house so things get a bit fiddly and roundabout. It’s all very clearly signposted: you have to climb to the right up a grassy hillside to the access road, turn right on this then left onto a minor road over a stile at the gates. Just as this road is about to emerge from some woods you turn left again back down another slope to end up in the front yard of the Lodge about 20ft from where you commenced this little detour. It’s quite a lot of exercise for a very short distance. Next comes a lovely walk up Stain Dale, through more woodlands then pastures, some of them unoccupied today, others occupied by sheep and their new lambs. Just path Low Staindale there is a ford and a footpath heads left up Dovedale toward the Bride Stones. This is a popular spot of a sunny spring Sunday. Of the people I met today I guess I must have encountered about 99% in the next mile. It’s a pleasant climb up Needle Point to the stones. These are less spectacular than Brimham Rocks, say, but still great fun. (There are more Bride Stones in the hills near Hebden Bridge. I’m not sure why the people of Yorkshire decided weirdly shaped pieces of rock should be associated with matrimony.) Most of the rocks today were serving as playgrounds for children taking what I’d guess were their first tentative steps into the grand art of climbing on rock. On the most spectacular of them, the famous Pepperpot, a couple of rather more expert and experienced young climbers were bouldering out the daunting overhang.
Leaving all this activity behind I headed off across the moor to pick up the track that skirts the forest edge towards Newgate Foot. The path that branches off to Newgate Foot is, according to Paddy Dillon’s guidebook, easily missed, He’s not lying. But the path branches off left across the fields at the same spot with a stile over the fence so the best plan is to look out for that stile and when you reach it ferret in the undergrowth for the path towards the farm. This is steep and rather muddy but not very long. Past the farm a couple of stiles and a gate lead into what Dillon, with some precision, describes as a “squelchy field”. More, somewhat less squelchy fields follow as you walk easily north alongside the forest to Malo Cross. From here I turned westwards and followed a good path up onto the top of Saltergate Brow, a high green place with wide views over Lockton High Moor. After about a mile the path leads through a narrow band of trees after which you take a right and walk steeply down through woodlands to get to the A69 at the bottom of the steep hill south of the derelict Saltergate Inn. I walked up this on the road which wasn’t fun but wasn’t far. Towards the top there is only any kind of verge on the left side (facing up) but going that way means you have to cross the road just on the corner where it is most dangerous to get, with considerable relief, onto the Levisham Moor track. Last time I came this way (see walk 15) I took the slightly longer way to Levisham along Levisham Bottoms by Skelton Tower, Today I took the more direct higher path across the moor past Seavy Pond and Dundale Pond. Having tried them both the former way has more to recommend it, the moor being relatively monotonous. But on a good path I was soon in Levisham. Good news: Lockton from here is just about a mile down the road. Bad news: it’s a mile that involves a very big, steep windy descent to Levisham Mill Farm on the valley floor and another big steep, windy descent back up to Lockton: a path on the right offers a shortcut that irons out a big bend but is even steeper; a somewhat punishing way to end the walk, maybe be better to start it in Levisham and get this bit over at the start.
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