NEXT door to Malham's campsite is the National Trust's Town Head Barn, the only Dales field barn in original condition open to the public. It has owl holes, muck holes, bor holes for air and forking holes.

We walked past our previous night's watering hole and along the beck. A sign read 'don't go near the water'; lads and a lass from the Environment Agency were electro-fishing the tiny brown trout to measure them. Lamas grazed a hillside.

To the south lies a smoother land, but we soon turned away from that and after the hamlet of Hanlith took a steep bit of Tarmac that turned to track.

Then there was a mile or more with super long views, over the village of Malham to the face of Malham Cove and into the mouth and the shadowy chasm of Gordale Scar, and on to a large array of crags.

Eventually we lost these views, gained height, saw big hills silhouetted to the east, found the simple waymark posts, and joined an unmistakable newly surfaced bridleway. This plummets south to vanishing point; narrow and proudly cambered and firm but gravelly, it looked amazingly fast but lethal for a bike.

Said track took us uphill to the Trig Point at 1358 feet on Weets Top. This is a viewpoint sandwich stop with a southerly aspect. A hundred yards away is the shaft and stepped socket of a cross, which is the viewpoint facing north to special summer meadows.

Take your choice, everyone must stop here because a squirrel in a territory of no trees hung around for titbits, though actually on the day there were no other walkers on these uplands.

The route drops to a dead-end road called Smearbottom Lane further uphill, but downhill it becomes Hawthorns Lane and we took its very steep and metalled surface. Here we saw, you couldn't miss it in the air, an albino jackdaw. It became just another rock when feeding for grubs on the pastures with its black mate, until it moved. A change for the local peregrine falcons.

Then down to the popular delights. We got close to the 'awesome' Gordale Scar, were glad we didn't camp there in the full gaze. The electro-fishers were on Gordale Beck, which a few hundred yards further on drops over Janet's Foss.

Here, as always, a dozen visitors were energised by this prettiest and most intimate of little waterfalls, a place where "Janet, queen of the local fairies, lives in a cave behind the waterfall". Unless electrocuted.

The last mile back follows the beck through lovely woods of rock and fern and then pastures. Normally it is so busy that one ends up walker-watching, although there aren't the hold-ups there were in the days of the eccentric twin one-way ladder stile system.

Click here to view a map of the walk

Updated: 08:57 Saturday, September 25, 2004