Shake off the cobwebs at Buckden Pike

How are you feeling? Fresh-faced and motivated, or maybe in need of a little cobweb-brushing? Amanda Brown suggests a walk to the summit of Buckden Pike…

At 702 metres high, Buckden Pike in Upper Wharfedale isn’t the loftiest hill in the Yorkshire Dales but a 6.5-mile loop via the summit offers views that are every bit as rewarding as you look out across to Yorkshire’s Three Peaks and a great feeling of being out in the wilds.

Follow a 6-mile loop from Buckden and those views open up as you stride along Buckden Rake, an old Roman road which once linked forts between Ilkley and Bainbridge, before starting the steeper ascent to the top.

The summit is marked by a triangulation pillar and cairn, while a short way further along there’s a poignant cross erected in memory of five Polish airmen who crashed their Wellington Bomber during a training mission in a severe snow storm in 1942.

Look out for the fox’s head at the base of the cross, a reference to the footprints of a fox that the lone survivor, Joseph Fusniak, followed down through the snow to the White Lion at Cray in his search for help.

On the descent back down to the village of Starbotton you join the old packhorse route called Walden Road just as the valley views start to open up and you see the Dales landscape with the lines of dry stone walls and barns before you.