An Aire Valley adventure -

- or nearly misadventure!

Went to the village of Cononley today up the Aire Valley with corninthian column, to continue our series of Aire Valley walks.

The village is lovely but the morning started with near disaster - I forgot my camera! Chris came to the rescue and we found that the Post Office had a coffee machine so we sat in the sun drinking coffee whilst waiting.

On our way we proceeded past the village institute up a steep climb and then a 'walled green way' as described in the book.

This view is looking back from just above this point to Cononley and the Aire Gap and as you can see the flood plain is living up to it's name.
The parallel walls on the right of the picture house the said ' walled green way'. Which as you can see is more of a raging torrent than a track!

We then encountered a bull on the path right in front of us. He was busy munching so thankfully pretty much ignored us as we passed.

The walk was called Cononley Lead mine which you can see here in the middle distance. It is apparently the southern most lead mine in Yorkshire built in 1842 and closed in 1882, with work continuing into the 20th Century for barytes (?)

Continuing on from here we climbed up past a farm which looked more like a scrap yard than anything else - here we encountered 4 dogs - three chained but too close for comfort (2 were Rottweillers!) and a little yappy thing.

Tried to smile at the farmer who seemed to be laughing at us when he told us the path went around the back of the farm (no doubt through all his scrap vehicles and machinery!)

From here it was very pleasant looking across to Earl Crag and Cowling. This is the drive away from the horrible farm Ribbon of light with the view across Lothersdale Road to Early Crag.
A straight forward return - yes except for a gate that wouldn't open and a style without steps on the descent side!

Glad to be back in sight of the village we missed out crossing the railway and walking along the riverside path (probably under water) we headed home to treat ourself to lunch at the Potting Shed.

The next walk in the book is Cononley Ings which is in the valley bottom. It warns that after heavy rain the fields can become seriously flooded - I think we will leave that one until they next declare a drought!