Fountains Ways - Curlew Way, Nidderdale

Fountains Way, Curlew Way (Kirkby Malzeard, Winksley, Dallowgill), 8 miles, 1 day

This walk, within the Nidderdale National Landscape, crosses sheep-grazed farmland and stately parkland, following river valleys, but is within view of the open moorland at Dallowgill that is the breeding ground of endangered Eurasian curlew whose ecstatic calls can be heard in spring and summer. This route connects to the Fishers’ Way at Kirkby Malzeard and the Abbots’ Way at Winksley.

The landscape of pasture, woods, becks (streams) and valleys has been influenced by large landowning estates, such as Studley Royal/Fountains Abbey, Grantley Hall and Dallowgill Estates, but this walk also reveals smaller estates and minor settlements that were never large enough for their own churches. As well as curlews from March to July you might hear lapwings and woodland birds as you walk, see hares streaking across the fields, and kites and other raptors wheeling overhead.

Braithwaite Hall between Kirkby Malzeard and Galphay is a rustic-looking country house dating from the sixteenth century set in extensive landscape gardens and parkland showing traces of medieval ridge and furrow ploughing.

Galphay (‘enclosure where the gallows stood’) and Laverton never had Anglican churches though both had Methodist chapels. Galphay still has a public house, but there is no longer a pub at Winksley – though Countryman House was in living memory the Countryman Inn.

Dallowgill is a remote valley surrounded by open moorland. Dallowgill Moor is the source of the River Skell, and from here it runs down the Skell Valley to the historic cathedral city of Ripon.

There were unrealised proposals in the last century to flood the valley for a reservoir so a replacement chapel and burial ground was built in the 1950s closer to Kirkby Malzeard. This is the Chapel of the Resurrection, and a visit to its burial ground with views of open moorland is an optional addition to this walk.

This route is part of a group of three intersecting Fountains Way routes:

Fountains Way, Abbot's Way

Fountains Way, Curlew Way

Fountains Way, Fishers' Way