Our drawing of the route, over road and path data from OpenStreetMap. It shows where the walk goes and what it goes through. It is not a survey and not a navigation aid — carry OS Explorer on the hill.
Three and a half miles and an hour and forty minutes on the flat, along the Esk from Dalegarth to the packhorse arch at Doctor Bridge, past the Woolpack Inn and back on the other bank through Boot. Start at Dalegarth station, where the paid car park is the only real option in the valley bottom - the Boot village spaces are for residents and the Woolpack's are for customers. The Esk is the whole point for a dog: long gravel-bottomed pools deep enough to swim, shade from the alders, and both pubs on the route take dogs in the bar. The valley is grazed throughout with sheep and some cattle, and Doctor Bridge is narrow with no parapet on the upstream side.
The refurbished cafe at Dalegarth for Boot, at the Eskdale end of the fifteen-inch gauge line, serving lunches, snacks and ice cream to walkers coming off Stanley Ghyll and the Esk path. Dogs are allowed on the lower floor but not upstairs, where Wakefield's afternoon tea room is, so the ground-floor seating and the platform are the places to sit. There are toilets and a large pay-and-display car park here, which makes it the practical starting point for most Eskdale walks. Water bowls are set out around the station.
Seven converted farm buildings around a yard at Boot, on a working farm beside the Whillan Beck, with the most detailed published dog policy anywhere in Eskdale. Six of the seven take dogs but the number varies by cottage: two large or three small at the Farmhouse, two at Wastwater, two at Scafell only if they sleep in crates, one large or two small at Hardknott, Wrynose and Stanley Ghyll, and one small dog at Whillan Beck. There is an enclosed shared paddock and a garden by the beck, though dogs are not allowed off the lead in the shared gardens. No dog under a year old is accepted at all.
A walkers inn at the entrance to Boot, with a bar known for its whisky shelf and the Eskdale Mill path over the bridge. Dogs are allowed in the bar and the snug only: they are not allowed in the bedrooms at all, which is the opposite of most Eskdale inns and worth knowing before you book.
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