Ilkley Moor Walk

Moors are always places I imagine to be featureless almost barren stretches of land.Living high on the Pennines I'm pretty used to trudging over this type of landscape, hoping to descend into the much more pleasant valleys. So with this in the back of my mind we set off to Ilkley for a walk near to the Cow and Calf on Ilkley Moor.



It's always very busy, so today we kept way form the crowds. In all we walked 2 and a half miles. We walked up onto the moor and headed towards one of several rocky outctops, here we found a geocache, there are lots of strange isolated stones up here and these are useful to help you navigate. We set off again and headed for the horizon, now the landscape changed as we walked along the Lanshaw Delves, these bumps are a glacial moraine.  Next we headed into a small valley that cuts into the moor, stopped for a drink and headed back towards the edge of the moor.


Next stop was the 'Pancake stone' the kids enjoyed climbing onto this strange rocky outcrop. Soon we were back at the car and heading home.


The surprising thing is we will be able to come here again and have a quite different walk, we didn't see the 'Druids circle' and kept away from the 'Cow and calf' 


The kids didn't moan all day - bonus!