Dry-stone walls, a view across Wharfedale and a squall on Rombalds Moor, Ilkley. Photograph: James Elkington/Getty Images View image in fullscreen Dry-stone walls, a view across Wharfedale and a squall on Rombalds Moor, Ilkley. Photograph: James Elkington/Getty Images Walking holidays Beyond Bradford and the Brontës – new walking trail shows West Yorkshire’s natural beauty The Bradford Pennine Gateway Trail, launching this weekend, aims to ‘change perceptions of Bradford’ by taking in the moors and the area’s new national nature reserve
Prefer the Guardian on Google A grainy photograph, dated 1938, hangs in a frame on the downstairs wall of my B&B. It shows 100, perhaps 200, elegantly attired trippers sitting on the green at Shipley Glen in West Yorkshire. They’re picnicking, chatting, taking the air and enjoying the sunshine, while admiring the rocks and woods that frame the deep gully below. It’s local, low-carbon, cheap-as-chips tourism before the jet age – and also a model for how we may travel in the future.
I arrived here thanks to a new trail , launching on 19 September, that runs through the also newly established Bradford Pennine Gateway national nature reserve – astonishingly, the first reserve of this kind to be created in West Yorkshire. The trail uses almost the same name and is a savvy bit of sustainable planning, connecting the three towns of Ilkley, Saltaire and Haworth but, by appealing to walkers, hopefully inspiring people to explore beyond the confines of these honeypots.
I began at Ilkley on a Monday morning. I’d been on its moor once before, for a long circular hike. But I actually prefer linear walks, and it felt like a challenge to start out by crossing the moor. The first half hour was all upward, with lots of stone staircases and some steep sections. A hovering kestrel welcomed me to the top as a reward.
In fact, the great ridge of moorland above Ilkley is called Rombalds Moor ; named after a legendary giant, and which comprises several named moors. I tramped across Ilkley, Burley and Bingley moors in a single lunge, stopping only a few times to drink water, take in the massive views back to the “golf ball” radomes of RAF Menwith Hill near Harrogate, over to Leeds – increasingly a high-rise city – and down to the Emley Moor transmitter near Wakefield (the tallest freestanding structure in the UK), and to admire the Twelve Apostles stone circle near the summit.
View image in fullscreen Twelve Apostles stone circle on Burley Moor. Photograph: Mark Sunderland Photography/Alamy I had an easy downward stroll before ascending, more gently this time, to the shoulder of Baildon Moor. The vegetation on these moors is mainly heather (pinkish purple now), dense swathes of bracken, tough upland grasses and peat bog, broken up by gritstone outcrops. The NNR designation recognises that it is an area rich in biodiversity, for flora and fauna, and that it plays an important role in tackling challenges like the climate crisis, floods and wildfires. I was walking more than I was watching, but I clocked skylarks, meadow pipits, wheatears, swallows and, on the south side of Baildon, a colony of tree sparrows. As well as clusters of forestry conifers, there were patches of native trees, including birch, rowan and elder, and the occasional willow. Though it’s not wild all the way: I passed tourist chalets, crossed a few fast roads, and walked through a busy golf course (where there were benches, few and far between on the first…