This beautiful 80 km / 50-mile circular walk in the Yorkshire Dales threads its way around the valleys of Wensleydale and Swaledale and over the mountains and moorlands between these two emerald dales. A walk designed to take in some of the countryside beloved by James Alfred Wight, the vet who wrote about his experiences in the Yorkshire Dales as James Herriot. These books became popular in the 1970s and 80s and spawned a film and a very popular television series ‘All Creatures Great and Small’.

Besides walking through the Yorkshire countryside, the attractiveness and variety of the route is such that it could be easily classed the best short walk in England. The Yorkshire Dales have often been coined as ‘Gods Own Country’ and with good reason, with a little bit of luck with the weather, you are treated to a beautiful landscape bursting with colour and light. The land encompasses the sleepy rivers punctuated by cascading water off of the limestone escarpments, the fields stocked with multiple sheep, the high moors, bristling with sedge, bracken and bilberry.

Then of course there are the attractive local villages, small but bustling with farm and estate workers, walkers and tourists. Firstly there is Aysgarth a village by the cascading Aysgarth Falls, Hawes the main town in Wensleydale which has a market and is a centre for rope and cheese making. When walking into Keld you’ll find it is the quietest place, tucked into a hilly fold in remote upper Swaledale. Reeth, a village edged with tea shops and pubs, reflects the time when lead mining was the economic key to the area.

Most of the trails are easily followed and follow parts of both the Pennine Way and The Coast to Coast. The James Herriot Way is an excellent introduction to long distance walking on these longer trails.