Pen-y-ghent

Saturday 6^th April 2019

Leader: Alan Schofield

The car parks in Horton-in-Ribblesdale were already nearly full as our group of 14 set off in a northeasterly direction along the Pennine Way. We were bathed in sunshine as we climbed steadily along the walled path, the grassy banks studded with the flowers of barren strawberry and a few lesser celandines. The familiar tussocks of tufted hair-grass were just springing into growth here. We turned right through a gate and followed the Pennine Way across open moorland as the gradient grew steeper. Despite the warm sunshine, this was still very early season at this altitude and we struggled to make out the tiny leaves of common dog-violet, hoary plantain, yarrow and selfheal at points along the way.

Where the path turned south towards the summit of Pen-y-ghent, with its remnants of drifted snow, we went straight ahead to the west-facing limestone outcrop, where we found the star attraction of the day, purple saxifrage. We had timed the visit to perfection, as there were many plants with open flowers and some time was spent below the rock face, exploring the nooks and crannies, where we found moschatel and green spleenwort, as well as the more common maidenhair spleenwort and wall-rue. A diligent search for hoary whitlowgrass proved fruitless and, looking up at the alarmingly cracked rock above and the fresh rock falls below us, we decided to descend to a grassy bank for lunch, with magnificent views westward of Ribblehead Viaduct, Ingleborough and Morecambe Bay in the far distance.

We then climbed a grassy track around the south end of the rock face, noting the tiny leaves of hairy lady’s-mantle on the way up. Once on top, we headed north, over a stile and then turned left along a wall, to end up above the rock face we had explored before lunch, albeit a little further north. Here we found further patches of purple saxifrage, along with limestone bedstraw and wild thyme, with the trifoliate leaves of wood-sorrel in the sheltered recesses. Looking east, the contrast between the cracked limestone on which we were standing and the weathered gritstone layers above it was stark. As we recrossed the gritstone, someone remarked that we should be seeing heath bedstraw and, hey presto, there it was!

At this point some in the party decided to return to Horton, while the rest of us set off on a long trek northeast towards Plover Hill. The flat peaty terrain featured an abundance of common cottongrass, with the occasional clump of hare’s-tail cottongrass thrown in for good measure. The drier raised patches of ground were colonized by various ericaceous shrublets, including heather, bilberry, cowberry and crowberry. With cowberry abundant here, it would have been interesting to look for its hybrid with bilberry but there were no fresh leaves to study yet. Also fairly frequent in this area was the stiff sedge, not often seen closer to home in West Yorkshire. On the trodden path, common deergrass stubbornly survived in its characteristically dense low tussocks.

On the steep stony descent from Plover Hill, we found what looked like the leafy stems of yellow saxifrage. Then it was time for a fast-paced walk back along the valley to the Pennine Way. On this stretch we saw the leaves of lesser spearwort, brooklime and round-leaved crowfoot, before the stream disappeared into a pothole, as is often the case in this area of the Yorkshire Dales. It was a very warm arrival back in picturesque Horton after a 9-mile round-trip walk, many of us sporting a newly-acquired suntan, a fitting start to the 2019 summer season.

Text by Andrew K

Photographs by Alan, Bruce, Roger and Susan