I have sometimes wondered if I should write a guidebook of walks to do on days with poor weather. Walks without exposed summits and ridges that you might be blown off by high winds or on which you battle gusts that make it impossible to go in a straight line. Walks without paths that turn into quagmires in heavy rain. Walks that have points of interest within a few metres for when low level cloud means there is no chance of a stirring view across a valley. Although I have not put a single word on paper for this imagined guidebook, I have got a mental list of walks I can do on wet and windy days. Last week I tried out a new walk that I was thinking would be a good addition to this list.

The weather forecast for the Yorkshire Dales described itself as having high uncertainty, but seemed to have quite a lot of certainty that the day on which I was going on my walk would involve cold, strong winds and heavy rain. I therefore looked for an interesting walk that was either low or sheltered, and perhaps far enough from the Dales to avoid the worst of the weather. I found a walk that fitted that description in the Harrogate and Ilkley guidebook from the Walking in Yorkshire series of books. The walk was a loop from the Forestry England car park at Stainburn Moor that took in reservoirs, the remains of a castle, woods, and a bouldering venue I’d not been to. It seemed like a good bet, but ended up not being as enjoyable as I had hoped.

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