Distance Covered: 1.5 miles Time to Complete Walk 1.5 hours
Suitable for dog walking: Yes
This is an amazing short walk which packs so much in for under 1.5 miles. Ideal for a dog walk or if youre visiting the nearby town of Otley, this walk follows the Sculpture trail and then passes a jaw dropping rock formation, cascading waterfalls and an Iron Age settlement. All in under 1 and a half hours!. Parking is either at the Lower End or Higher End car park and you need to pay using the Park & Go app and is £2.70 for 4 hours.
General Safety Tips: Wear boots as the tracks can get muddy. Take when exploring the rocks. There is a short climb back to the car park.
The Chevin Walk
From Middlesbrough follow the A19 to the M1 southbound. Leave the M1 on the Leeds Airport turn off which is the A59. Just before Pool in Wharfdale, turn right and head along Pool Road. Head into Otley and turn left onto Walkergate and left onto Charles Street. Take Gay Lane and climb up E Chevin Road. The car park is on your left.
Maps of The Chevin walk
The Walk
From the car park head to the right on the path to the Sculpture trail.
There are lots of information boards along the way, keep right along the Sculpture trail.
Look out for the Sculptures along the trail.
Keep ahead at a fork in the path
Keep ahead passing some more sculptures.
Passing another sculpture head left down the path.
Turn left on the return path and take the lower path when the path forks.
Approach the amazing rock formations, worth climbing to explore further!
Continue on the path arriving at some lovely waterfalls.
Continue on the path soon arriving at the remains of an Iron Age settlement.
Head into the trees and look for a path that climbs on your left.
Climb up the path and at the top follow the path round back to the car park.
The Chevin
The name is Brythonic in origin, the earliest attestation of the name in English is an eleventh-century copy of a charter from 972 which gives the spelling as Scefinc, with another charter of around 1030 records it as on Scefinge. These early spellings suggest that an originally Celtic term (related to the Modern Welsh "is y cefn", meaning below the ridge) was borrowed into English, as the initial s- likely indicates the name was preceded by a word unfamiliar to speakers of Old English.
As such, the word Chevin simply means "back", "ridge" or "ridge of high land", and shares its etymology with many other hills across western Europe, such as The Cheviot in Northumberland, Cefn Cribwr and Cefn Bryn in Glamorgan and the Cévennes in France. One of the steep hillsides of the Chevin is called the Great Dib, first attested in 1290 as Dibe. Since dib is a Middle English word for 'pool', this name probably originally referred to a pool at the foot of the slope. The Chevin is largely covered in attractive old woodland and heathland. It is a part of the Carboniferous Millstone Grit group. A Roman road ran along the top of the Chevin, part of the road that linked Eboracum (York), Calcaria (Tadcaster) and Olicana (Ilkley), perhaps on the same route as the modern road, Yorkgate, or perhaps about 800 metres (2,600 ft) to the south.
The highest point of the Chevin is often thought to be Surprise View, however it is in fact Beacon Hill next to Yorkgate quarry which reaches 283 metres (928 ft) at grid reference SE199441 and used to be the site of a trig point. Surprise View is the more visited summit of the Chevin and offers extensive views of Otley and Wharfedale, and has an adjacent car park. It is the site of a cross erected every Easter since 1969.
Parts of the Chevin, known as the Danefield Estate, belonged to landowner Walter Fawkes and his descendants. After World War II these areas were donated to Otley Urban District Council as a memorial to those from the Wharfe Valley who had lost their lives during the war.
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