Welcome to ramblers Yorkshire!
Steve Rawlings, Area Chair of the West Riding Area
Hiya - Welcome to God’s Own Country and the website of the West Riding Area of the Ramblers.
The West Riding Area takes its name from the historic administrative divisions of Yorkshire into “ridings”, thriddings or thirdings. It’s a convenient name as it covers the locations where most of our members live. From the more rural areas now in North Yorkshire of Wetherby, Craven and Harrogate via the industrial heartlands of Bradford, Huddersfield and Leeds to Wakefield in the south.
The region we look after on behalf of the walking community is centred encompasses the southern Pennines and the Yorkshire Dales National Park.
The Area is constituted of 12 autonomous groups mostly on a location basis. They are as diverse as the West Riding as are the wide range of walks undertaken. Most have websites you can explore from the tabs under Area Groups. We hope there is something for all tastes.
If you are new to the area on holiday or a new resident, I’m sure we have something for all tastes. There are over 200 walks already in our programme for the first 6 months of 2025, with new walks being added each week. Last year our groups arranged 938 walks. In addition to walks on our home turf, some groups arrange walks further afield as does our popular Coach Rambles Our programme is kept regularly updated. Check out the tab for Walks and Coach Rambles.
In addition to promoting walking as an exercise and enjoying our unique countryside, we are an organisation that looks to enhance and protect footpaths and the countryside. We always need volunteers in helping in this invaluable work - see our Footpaths page, if you have any important footpath news please contact Steve Fleming and we will share it on the website.
If you are new to the region and wish to join one of the walks or become a member, please email the contact point given for each of our groups.
Enjoy Yorkshire and happy walking.
LWR Footpath Maintenance Team Go ‘Off Piste’ To Help NYC
Following a request from North Yorkshire Council, Lower Wharfedale Ramblers agreed to leave their traditional territory and install two new footpath gates near Boroughbridge. Both gates replaced existing stiles on a popular footpath through the Roecliffe Estate linking Ripon and Boroughbridge. The path follows the banks of the River Ure opposite the popular Newby Hall.
Read more: LWR Footpath Maintenance Team Go ‘Off Piste’ To Help NYC
New traffic free route helps Dales Way walkers
Thanks to a unique collaboration between the Chatsworth Estate at Bolton Abbey, volunteers from Burley Walkers are Welcome and the Dales Way Association, a new section of permissive footpath has been constructed that takes walkers away from the busy and dangerous traffic on the B6160 near Bolton Bridge.
Walking Beside Water
Walking for recreation is not only an excellent way of obtaining physical exercise, it's also particularly good as a means of pursuing a wide range of interests such as enjoying the birds and the bees, and the flora and fauna, perhaps to appreciate the views of which our part of the world has many to offer. Walking beside water has all of these, and it is usually fairly level walking too, particularly welcome for those whose limbs are becoming less lissom than in their more youthful days. And walking beside navigable water, i.e. navigable rivers, and canals, is often bountiful in providing historical interest. The reason for this is that for most of human history anything big and heavy that had to be transported had to go by water. Yorkshire is rich with examples. Finding out more about this has been an enjoyable journey of discovery for me, much of it from written sources, but involving quite a lot of waterside walking too
Forget the Munros - climb the Allans!
Sir Hugh Munro could hardly have known what he started when he decided to catalogue all the Scottish peaks over 3000 feet in altitude. His idea was soon copied - the Marilyns being thought up by some bright spark who latched onto the obvious connection with Munro. The ball having been set rolling, other minds got to work, and we now have Corbetts, Donalds, Grahams, Humps, Hughs, Murdos, Simms, Tumps, Hewitts, Nuttalls, Birketts, Synges, Deweys, Dodds, Hardys, Wainwrights and others too numerous to mention.
Turbines on the Bronte Moors - a threat to an iconic South Pennine landscape
It sounds like a dream scheme for any committed climate activist or environmentalist – a clean, green, wind power project capable of meeting the energy requirements of 286,491 homes and saving 426,246 tonnes of carbon release annually. So why is it causing so much anger and dismay among so many Yorkshire ramblers?
