Escape to the Yorkshire Dales

Limestone country between Settle and Grassington

Three Peaks rise from the moor above Settle — Pen-y-Ghent, Whernside and Ingleborough — and you spend the first walking day with them in view. The Yorkshire Dales National Park is limestone country: dry stone walls running up to scars and crags, flower-rich meadows in the valleys, high heather moorland above. People have farmed Malhamdale since the Bronze Age, and the villages still show the layering — Anglian farmers, Norsemen, medieval monks, Victorian builders.

This is a six-day, five-night walk linking Settle, Malham and Grassington, with two nights based in Malham itself. Distances are moderate rather than punishing, and the route shapes itself around the area's better-known features — Malham Cove, Malham Tarn, the Settle Loop — without rushing past them.

Settle to Malham, then a circular day

You arrive in Settle, a working market town wrapped around the Settle–Carlisle Railway and the limestone landscape it cuts through. Calendar Girls was filmed here, if that helps place it. The Golden Lion, a Grade II listed inn from 1841 in the centre of town, is one of the night-one options; the alternative is the Harts Head Hotel in the nearby village of Giggleswick.

The first walking day picks up part of the Settle Loop and crosses limestone upland with the Three Peaks on the horizon before dropping down through farmland to Malham. The standard route is 10 miles (16km) with 405m of ascent; there is a shorter 7-mile (11km) alternative if you would rather ease in. Malham Beck runs through the middle of the village.

The second day is a circular walk from Malham, heading north on the Airedale Way to Malham Tarn — England's highest freshwater lake and a National Nature Reserve — then looping back over the top of Malham Cove and down into the village. 250m up, 250m down, both views worth the effort.

From Malham, the walking continues south through flower-rich meadows towards Grassington, with Burnsall on the way — a stone-built village on the Wharfe and, according to local lore, the home of Yorkshire's own Dick Whittington.

Comfort along the way

The accommodation sits at the comfort end of the walking-holiday spectrum — country inns and well-kept B&Bs rather than basic walkers' rooms. In Malham, the choice is between Beck Hall (a 1710 building that is now England's first fully plant-based hotel, with a streamside restaurant), the Lister Arms (Yorkshire-traditional, real ales, home cooking) or River House, a Victorian B&B with parts dating to 1664. All are in or beside the village.

A full Yorkshire breakfast comes with the rooms, and evening meals lean on local produce, regional ales and proper pub cooking, including, inevitably, Yorkshire pudding. Tea rooms turn up reliably along the routes.

It suits walkers who want comfortable bases, manageable daily distances and the headline features of the Dales without rushing through them. Six days gives the walking room to breathe rather than become a checklist.