coming alive in the dales

Although I know the Yorkshire Dales pretty well, I always think of them as the gentler, prettier cousin to the moody and magnificent Lakes, and the wild, rugged Moors. However, yesterday's wonderful walk in perhaps the loveliest, picture-perfect dale of them all - Wharfedale - made me think again. Beyond Bolton Abbey's day-trippers, the tea shops of Grassington and the riverside picnics of Burnsall lies a tough landscape of spectacular grandeur.

There is a gloomy beauty to Upper Wharfedale, as you head further up the valley from the charming village of Kettlewell towards Hubberholme, Cray and Yockenthwaite. Here is a land of eroded gulleys, known as hags, and wind-battered limestone crags. The route I took was enchanting and challenging in equal measure. It was also split into two distinct halves. First there was a long, flat meander by the River Wharfe along the valley bottom, characterised by vivid green fields of new-born lambs, glorious riverside paths and short detours to an odd village pub or two. The second half began with a bugger of a climb from the doorstep of the last of these, The White Lion in Cray, to ascend the hulking mass of Buckden Pike.

The Pike itself looks fairly innocuous from its base but, like many rounded hills, it is a trickster and a charlatan to the unsuspecting walker. The slope soon steepens and you reach a large area of peat moorland with some distinctly boggy patches, even in dry weather. Each summit turns out to be a fake which only reveals the next climb as soon as you reach it. The real summit lies at 702m and, once you finally get there, feels suitably bleak and windswept. It does, however, offer the fine compensation of a full 360-degree panorama: the Lake District's Conistone Fells, Helvellyn and Scafell Pike to the west; the Peak District and North York Moors to the south and east respectively, and - in the middle distance - Yorkshire's Three Peaks, Pen-y-ghent, Ingleborough and Whernside.

Around a kilometre south of the summit stands a memorial to a Polish aircrew whose Wellington bomber crashed here during a fierce snowstorm in January 1942. The sole survivor, who broke his leg, crawled away from the wreckage and followed a fox track downhill to the White Lion, where I had begun my ascent. The memorial is a mournful but touching reminder of the five airmen who lost their lives, with remnants of the plane scattered around its base alongside a fox's head in bronze. The story of Joe Fusniak, the survivor of the tragedy, is an astonishing tale of wartime survival in a land, and in circumstances, so far removed from the battlefront.

From here, it was a long and superbly scenic high-level return across open moorland to Cam Head, with spectacular views down Cam Gill towards Starbotton. Once on the long and straight Top Mere Road, I feasted on yet more tremendous views during the gradual descent to Kettlewell. The village remained hidden from view until I was virtually on top of it, and the gathering gloom alerted me to the fact that it was now almost 8pm, around two hours later than I had expected to finish! There was just time to say hello to the locals in the King's Head, and let my dog Molly crash out on the flagstone floor next to the open fire, before it was time to head reluctantly out of the Dales once more.