Buckden to West Burton – 9 July 2022
How to get to West Burton? Turn left just before Aysgarth. That might seem a bit obvious but we have only been to West Burton twice before. The first time was in 2010 and the last was in 2016 and there will not be many people who remember those walks or even how we got to the start of the routes.
So you turn left just before Aysgarth and you are on the B6160 road and West Burton is 1.5-miles along the road. However, that is our finish and the starts are somewhat further away. The 10-mile route gets started first at Buckden and follows the line of the B6160 back to West Burton. The 11.5-mile route is second to start at a place called Starbotton and does a slow climb to Buckden Pike (702 meters) before heading down to Walden Head and following Walden Beck into West Burton. The 12-mile route starts further down the road at Kettlewell and also climbs to Buckden Pike but then stays on the ridge and heads towards Noughtberry Hill and comes off the ridge just before West Burton.
Both the 11.5-mile route and the 12-mile route also visit the Memorial close to the trig point on Buckden Pike. The Memorial was erected to commemorate the five Polish airmen who lost their lives when their plane crashed on Buckden Pike during a blizzard on 30 January 1942. You can read the story of the crash and how one man, Joseph Fusniak survived here.
Low level or high level with a chance to visit Buckden Pike and the Memorial, the choice is yours. If you would like to join us for a walk you can get in touch with us using the Contact Page of our website and you can also download the walk descriptions below and the GPX routes here.
Every time we go out there is always something that catches the eye even on the wettest or coldest days. On our last walk where we finished at Keswick, two of the routes climbed Skiddaw and on the way down we watched a rain cloud passing through the hills over to our right. It was probably similar to the one that caught us on the way to the top earlier in the day but it was quite satisfying knowing that this one was going to miss us. If you would like to see more of the images taken on that day you can check our Gallery page here.
