Swainby and the Cleveland Way

Barker's Crags and Scugdale

A short 3.1-mile round with a stiff 190 metres of ascent and about an hour and a half, climbing out of Scugdale to the little sandstone outcrops of Barker's Crags and returning by the bracken slope of Stoney Wicks; short but sharp, and the bracken path is narrow and overgrown by August. It starts at Scugdale Hall at the head of the dead-end lane out of Swainby, where there is very limited verge parking, so if it is full drop back to Huthwaite Green a mile down the valley. Scugdale Beck gives clean water at the bottom, the upper slopes are open moor for a dog to range, but the crags are popular with climbers and have unprotected drops, sheep graze the whole valley and the moor edge, and leads are needed on the moor from 1 March to 31 July.