Embsay to Gargrave and back 2019

Saturday 3^rd August 2019

I had a spare day while staying in Embsay near Skipton at the beginning of my Dales High Way walk, and decided to head over to Gargrave along the canal.  I had heard there was a nice tearoom and sweet shop there.

I left Embsay, I saw scores of rabbits in a field alongside the road – I counted well over 20.  I had a few chores to do in Skipton, but once those were out of the way, it was Gargrave bound!

  

The walk was not onerous, being dead flat the entire way.  There was a sign to say the towpath was closed (and on the map I could see no other convenient way to go), and just beyond a piece of fence had been propped over the towpath to stop people walking along, but someone was walking toward me from the other direction and they squeezed past the fence, and when I queried them, they said there were no other obstacles beyond it and that there was no clear reason for the towpath to be closed, so I shrugged and skirted around it.  I almost stepped on a small mouse (I think) and it scurried into the grass, but not before I got a shot of it.

There were a number of houseboats docked along the far side of the canal with a nice garden embankment beyond, but there was no sign of (human) activity, which I thought strange it being a weekend.  I got the impression that some of those houseboats were where people lived permanently.

There actually was a reason the towpath was closed: it was under repair, as part of it had been dug up and was awaiting new fill.  However, being a Saturday, there were no workers, and I felt I was doing no harm.  The canal also had wildlife in the form of waterfowl, of course.

A few houseboats chugged along, but they were not in any hurry, barely going faster than my walking pace.  In fact, one passed me about halfway there, I ended up passing it again at a lock, and it was behind me the rest of the way.

Once in Gargrave I hit the tearoom to have a cream tea, and then buy some sherbert and toffee, which I scoffed while sitting back up beside the canal.  While sitting there, I watched a group of people attempting to lift some motorised contraption, that a disabled boy used to get around, over a fence.  Eventually they managed, but I had noticed the towpath further along from them looked under repair.

I walked back the way I’d come, thinking that I might visit that tearoom again in a few weeks, as it was right on the Pennine Way but, sadly, I was too rushed that day to do so.