YORKSHIRE’S LOST DALE
“You’ve got to do it first.” Heather, the helpful assistant in the Pateley Bridge tourist office, had seen me looking admiringly at a bowl of enamelled badges that proclaimed ‘Nidderdale Way – 53 miles’. “If you want one, you’ll have to come back at the end and show me the mud on your trousers.”
As its name suggests, the circular and mostly off-road Nidderdale Way (recently extended to 54 miles) provides an excellent means of exploring the eponymous dale. The most south-easterly of the Yorkshire Dales, Nidderdale is the only one not included in the Yorkshire Dales National Park. Its exclusion has been somewhat controversial and, after several attempts to incorporate the dale, a compromise led to the designation of the Nidderdale Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty in 1994. The upside to this apparent snub is that Nidderdale largely remains a secret waiting to be discovered.
The route of the
