The Dales Way. Terry Marsh

new demands on the Devonshire Arms Hotel at Bolton Bridge, so the Cavendish Pavilion was built by the riverside to provide refreshments, and is now a popular place for visitors of all ages.

      Tea and snacks are available throughout the year from 10am (www.cavendishpavilion.co.uk), and with so much attractive scenery, pleasant circular walks, nature trails and an abundance of nearby parking, it is inevitably a honeypot that on fine weekends swarms with visitors quite like nowhere else along the way until you reach Bowness. A small shop here sells a variety of maps, booklets, sweets etc, and used to levy a small toll for entering the woods, which are private, and its pathways permissive only.

      Turn right on crossing the bridge, heading to the gated entrance to Strid Wood. As you enter Strid Wood, follow the broad track ahead and basically keep going. There are several colour-coded trails (originally laid out in the 19th century by the vicar of Bolton), but continue following this trail, ignoring deviations left and right, until you reach an information board close to the Strid Gorge, where the river has taken on a new lease of life. A short diversion is necessary to inspect the Strid proper, but take care as the rocks are very slippery.

      STRID WOOD

      You don’t have to be a trained naturalist to recognise immediately that Strid Wood is somewhere quite special, and almost certainly unique. It will be a rare occasion if you have the woods to yourself, for their heavily laden beauty and powerful natural qualities draw people from far and near to potter about among moss-covered grottoes, banks of fern, trees, rock formations and cascading water. Strid Wood is magnificent at all times of the year, but exceptional in spring and autumn, the one when the many wild flowers that colonise this narrow sanctum are bursting through; the other when the burnished bronze colours are at their most intense.

      In the 16th century, the forests of Skipton and Knaresborough met here at the River Wharfe, and it used to be said that a squirrel could travel all the way between the two towns without touching the ground. Strid Wood’s position in a deep gorge made it unsuitable as farmland, and so protected it from the tree clearances that occurred on the surrounding land.

      In Strid Woodland, an SSSI of importance

      Not surprisingly, in 1985 the wood was designated a Site of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI) under the terms of a management agreement with the Nature Conservancy Council, for it contains the largest area of acidic oak woodland and the best remnant of oak wood pasture in the Yorkshire Dales National Park. Being an upland site favours the native sessile oak, which can be identified by the lack of a stalk supporting the acorns. Unlike the English, or pedunculate oak, the sessile oak can thrive on the wetter, less fertile acidic soils of the north.

      Strid Wood Conservation Area is renowned for its wealth of plants and animals. Most of the trees are broadleaved, either sycamore or beech, the largest of which are between 250 and 300 years old. In addition, there is about 10 per cent ash, 6 per cent birch and a small number of oak. The ornithologist will discover as many as 62 species of nesting bird, while naturalists interested in lichen will find Strid Wood to be unrivalled in Yorkshire, with over 80 species, twice as many as elsewhere. Other surveys list 5 bat species, 97 species of fungi, 40 of Mollusca, 41 of liverworts and 98 mosses, many rare or very local in distribution. Altogether a remarkable place.

      THE STRID GORGE