Great Asby Scar
5½ miles/9km
THE GREAT ADVENTURE begins up in the north-west, in the newest part of the Yorkshire Dales. The Orton Fells and Great Asby Scar were only added to the national park in 2016. They’re in Cumbria rather than Yorkshire, but then a good tract of the Dales was already in Cumbria thanks to local government jiggery-pokery.
This is wild stuff. Great Asby Scar is home to some of the largest outcrops of limestone pavement in Europe, but it’s a noticeably darker, greyer limestone than you find further south. Gnarly hawthorns cling to the scar for dear life. Some of the fissures – properly known as grikes – are deep enough for you to climb into, if you’re careful and sure you can get out again. (While you’re down there, look out for the asplenium scolopendrium, or hart’s-tongue fern, that stubborn survivalist of the deepest, gloomiest grikes.)
We’ll head out from Orton in the Lune Valley, climbing the scarp of the Orton Fells and cresting Beacon Hill, where the vast sweep of Great Asby Scar unfurls. Plenty of time for grike-hopping, before we cross to The Knott. From here there’s a rare double-aspect view of two national parks in one panorama. The Lake District is the rolling tsunami away to the west, but turn your attention southwards. Ahead lies the ‘mainland’ of the Yorkshire Dales, and six whole days of myth, magic and places called ‘thwaite’. By the time we’re back in Orton, you’ll be questing not just for the first pub of the tour (the George) but also for the superb road trip that will carry you past the Howgill Fells and up the epic B6270 Birkdale Pass to your next destination. It’s a cracker.