Luckily for me, I don’t live too far from this superb area of rock architecture but I don’t visit nearly often enough. On the times I do, I unfortunately get stuck on many of the rock towers as I find many of them easy to ascend but hellish to get back down again!
(click on photos for full size/resolution)
The area, if visited at the right time of summer, is wick wi’ bilberries as we’d say around here. I used to graze my way around the paths between the stones with my mother and we were once most amused to hear some woman calling her child away from doing the same as she said that berries were dangerous! Wonder if she eats blueberries from the supermarket? they’re the cultivated variety…
At other times of year, the heather is beautiful too…
Wheelchair-quality paths around most of the site
These are usually the tors I get stuck atop! (below)
Some of them resemble funny faces – this looks like a dog to me…
I call these the twins (although not identical)…
Some of them have apparently been drinking or perhaps are just tired and have to lean on their neighbours for support…
Some look portly and also impossible to ascend – but of course they’re not with a good enough climber…
When you get to the far end, there is some lovely birch woodland to walk through…
Lots more bilberries…
Well worth an hour of anyone’s time!
The Adventures of a Mountain Coward 
Interesting place, that. I walked round the rocks about 15 years ago and have always meant to go back but never have. I like your descriptions of the various formations. It makes you wonder what the ancients thought of them, those strange rock shapes in the middle of nowhere.
Alen
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Unless they built them! 😉
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Very nice 🙂 A great selection of pics, another on my to-do list!
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Sounds like you’re going to have to be a bit creative trying to get free parking though 😉
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I’ve not heard of this before. Looks like good scrambling practice!
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It is if you’re good at gritstone but I’m hopeless. The holds are all rounded and not very incut.
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Some good pics there. Years since I have been there.
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Thanks Tessa – I keep wondering when I’ll get there myself!
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Funnily enough – I have never been there…I almost got there once but didn’t have enough money for the rip-off car park 😦
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I can’t remember paying to park but it’s quite a few years since I was there last. It’s worth a visit though. Wonder if any of the ‘Dales buses’ which run on Sunday go anywhere near them?
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What a great area to have so close even if its popular with tourists. Are you aware your photos are the same size here clicked full screen :o)
I always struggle with that type of rock scrambling, just so awkward, with sloping holds usually too far apart. Our grades always used to go down on English grit stone, sandstone,grunt- stone grim-stone… etc. Nice set of photos.
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I really can’t climb gritstone well at all!
My photos come out slightly bigger when I click them – they’re small ones though and pretty old. I always used to ask for the smallest print size as it’s easier to store – I still do in fact but nowadays the smallest size is much bigger.
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Those are good rocks. The woodlands have been looking great this last week with the slow explosion of greenery! Actually I was there one morning last week, putting up a sign showing where the parking meters are (shudder). I was rather shocked at the cost! £5 for four hours, or £6 all day… seems nearly as steep as those rocks 😉
I’ve done a fair bit of climbing there in the past; it’s good but can get scary very quickly. I would rather have liked to have got into ‘par cour’ when I was younger as running and jumping around on those rocks would be way cool.
How did you manage to get photo’s with no-one in them?
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I didn’t notice there was no-one in the photos – they are from years ago and, as I’ve worked shifts for around 30 years, was probably mid-week (which used to be quiet). But my friend suggests I must have taken them when the ice-cream van turned up! 😉
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Ah, Brimham Rocks! Not far from my in-laws, a day out when I was at university in Leeds, and also where the Bee Gees filmed part of their video to their hit, ‘You Win Again’. (You’ll google that video now, I bet….!)
I bought the single….. 😀
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Didn’t know that about the Bee Gees – I’ll have to have a google, yes!
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So it was! 😉
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