Dry Rigg and Horton in Ribblesdale

Start

Helwith Bridge Quarry car park opposite Helwith Bridge Inn BD24 OEH

Accessibility

Rough terrain, steep ladder stiles

Facilities

Toilets in National Park car park, 2 pubs and a café in Horton in Ribblesdale

Distance

8 kilometres - 3 - 4 hours

Route & Map

This walk gives you a bird’s eye view of a working quarry, joins the Ribble Way long distance footpath and visits one of the oldest churches in the Dales.

From Helwith Bridge Quarry car park turn left on to the main road heading towards Austwick. The boggy land on your right is Swarth Moor.
After 700 metres, at the crossroads, turn right to ‘Dry Rigg’. Stop to look at the conservation pond and information board on your left.
Go through the first set of gates but don’t enter the quarry at the second gates. Instead, take the path to the right signposted ‘Viewing Enclosure’. Walk along the bridleway that has a bank of earth on your left to screen the quarry.
Climb to the viewing enclosure and after looking at the quarry return to the bridleway to continue towards ‘Foredale’.
Continue until a tarmac road and turn right at bend in road. Go downhill through farm buildings passing the entrance to Arcow Quarry.
After quarry entrance, take path left off main road next to wall beside a woodland. Cross the quarry railway line on the bridge and continue on the grass path until the wall starts to slope upwards, at which point bear left across the middle of two fields heading towards the railway tracks. You should pass a zigzag in the wall.
Cross Settle Carlisle railway line at designated spot with EXTREME CARE and then head left for Craghill Farm. Walk through farmyard bearing right and at the river turn left to pick up the Ribble Way long distance path.
Keep to the left hand bank of the river all the way to Horton-in-Ribblesdale.
When you reach the main road in Horton turn right over the foot bridge. Go through the car park and pass the café and campsite. At the Golden Lion pub (opposite St Oswald’s Church) leave the main road and head straight down an unmade track. Go past the village hall and after 200 metres take the footpath on your right before buildings. Cross the field and small bridge across stream on your left. Once across, turn right and head to the river.
Cross the main river at the footbridge and turn left to re-join the Ribble Way heading back towards Helwith Bridge. This time, do not turn right back towards the railway crossing at Cragghill Farm but carry on along the river bank through the fields.
At a crossroads carry straight on, under the railway and through a gate. Turn left onto quarry road and almost opposite go through gate onto footpath built to keep walkers away from quarry lorries. Carry on through fields back to your start.

Route Options

What to look for

1. Swarth Moor is a rare lowland raised peatbog and Site of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI). Locals used to cut peat in early summer, leave it to dry and store it for fuel in the winter. Now the land is protected for the important wildlife habitats that are home to many rare and scarce plants and animals such as bog rosemary, small pearl-bordered fritillary butterflies and great crested newts (which are found here and nowhere else in the Yorkshire Dales National Park).

2. The pool in the Conservation Area was constructed in 2007 to create a wetland for wading birds and amphibians. It is an example of how an industrial site can be restored. Today frogs, toads and newts live here and otters have been spotted. Fifty species of birds frequent the quarry and a hundred pairs of sand martins build their nests in the gravel. Oystercatchers, redshanks and lapwings arrive in the summer.

3. Dry Rigg Quarry produces a rock called gritstone which is dug and crushed on site and shipped out by lorry or train. It is a very hard-wearing rock which is anti-skid so is used for motorways and aircraft runways.

4. The Viewing Enclosure gives a bird’s eye view of the operations of the quarry and Swarth Moor SSSI. There are information boards and a collection of Musical Rocks.

5. Foredale Cottages were the workers cottages for a now disused quarry. It was the location for the film ‘A Lad’ produced by a former Settle College pupil about a disillusioned teenager who was befriended by a Yorkshire Dales National Park Ranger.

6. Railway Crossing This is one of the only manned crossings of a railway in England. Each day a railwayman has to come and make sure there is no one trying to cross the railway whilst a train is coming.

7. The Three Peaks is a 38.6km long walk up Pen-y-Ghent, Whernside and Ingleborough. Walkers try to finish it in under 12 hours. Some runners can do it in under three hours.

9. St Oswald’s Church was built in the 1100s but was named after St Oswald, an early English Martyr who lived from 605 to 642. He was converted to Christianity as a teenager during exile in Scotland, by the monks of Iona. The tower was added in the fourteenth century.

10. The Ribble Way is a 117km footpath which follows the River Ribble from Longton, west of Preston through Ribchester, Clitheroe and Gisburn before continuing to its source at Gavel Gap near Ribblehead.

info@peopleandthedales.org

Dry Rigg and Horton in Ribblesdale

What to look for