The Dales Way. Terry Marsh

      The Old Bridge, Ilkley; the official start of the Dales Way

      Officially, the Dales Way begins beside the Old Bridge spanning the River Wharfe, formerly a packhorse bridge built in the 1670s to replace several previous bridges that failed to stand up to the river. The bridge is located down Stockeld Road, which branches from the A65 on the west side of Ilkley, just before reaching the town centre. If starting in the centre of Ilkley, walk north along New Brook Street, until you can go left through Ilkley Park, then continue to reach the Old Bridge. Walkers arriving by rail should turn into Brook Street, and then continue north into New Brook Street.

      Without crossing the bridge, go left onto a track alongside a house and The Old Bridge Garden centre; note the stone bench at the start, for the benefit of those walking the Dales Way. The nearby signpost exaggerates the distance to Bowness a little, as does one for Addingham a little farther on.

      The track soon meets the river, here broad, fast and shallow, and follows this until it emerges at a road near the Ilkley Lawn Tennis and Squash Club. Go forward along the club’s driveway, following it to the main buildings, and there diving left to a metal kissing-gate. Through the gate, follow a grassy path across a meadow, passing a redundant gate to another metal gate next to a large ash tree.

      After this, press on beside a fence to yet another kissing-gate beside a hawthorn beyond which the path continues between fences, and then follows a clear route, at times alongside a narrow stream, finally to emerge once more onto the banks of the Wharfe. Here another redundant kissing-gate heralds a narrow path rising to a footbridge. A little further, from the high point, such as it is, the track descends, travelling along the edge of a small wooded hillock with many glimpses of charming riverside scenes, a characteristic of much of this stage of the walk, and indeed the whole of the Dales Way.

      The route rejoins the riverbank after a gate giving into rough, riverside pasture. Eventually, the riverside path runs out to a gate giving onto the old Addingham road, now a quiet back road parallel with the A65. Bear right along the old road as far as Old Lane, and there turn right. The lane leads to a small housing estate, Low Mill Village.

      Low Mill is a peaceful retreat of carefully refurbished Industrial Revolution cottages won from the ruins of an old mill on the banks of the Wharfe. Amazingly, the mill seems to have survived the attention of the Luddites, an organisation formed in 1811 during a period of great distress, and opposed to the mechanisation of the textile mills in the industrial centres of the East Midlands, Cheshire, Lancashire and Yorkshire, believing it to be a cause of unemployment. In a five-year period of wanton destruction, the Luddites smashed machinery and destroyed the mills that housed them. The first outbreak was at Nottingham and is said to have been inspired by a young apprentice, Ned Ludd. Compared to what followed, that first upsurge was a mere token gesture, leading as it did to far more serious and organised rioting, especially here in the West Riding of Yorkshire, where many people were killed, mills and machinery destroyed, and rioters tried and executed or transported. Charlotte Brontë’s novel Shirley is set in this troubled time.

      Nearby Addingham received its share of rioting, but Low Mill seems to have escaped and now presents an historically interesting interlude early in the walk.

      Follow the road through Low Mill and continue on the other side to the end of an old lane (Low Mill Lane). Continue straight on, passing a row of cottages and the Old Rectory, which adjoins Addingham church, and then turn right (signposted) down a flight of steps to an old packhorse bridge, the parishioners’ route to the church. Carry on into the churchyard, there turning left to pass the church, and following its access path out towards the village of Addingham. From the old packhorse bridge it is possible to bear left across a field below the church to intercept the footpath and driveway to the church.