This valley in the Yorkshire Dales is home to charming villages, historic mining sites, scenic trails and England’s highest pub at 1,732 feet
The hidden gem is nestled within The Yorkshire Dales National Park(Image: daverhead via Getty Images)
Nestled at the northernmost point of the Yorkshire Dales, this dale is steeped in history from its mining past, with countless tales etched into its landscape.
Swaledale, a delightful Dale, is home to the River Swale, England’s fastest river, which gracefully meanders through its verdant fields. Tucked away amidst this natural beauty is the Tan Hill Inn, England’s loftiest pub, inviting guests to drop by as they traverse the undulating hills of Yorkshire.
Perched at an impressive 1,732 feet above sea level, this historic pub dates back to the 17th century and exudes a cosy charm. Adorned with exposed beams, a stone-flagged entrance and a crackling fire, it provides the perfect tranquil spot for a pint and a bite while exploring the region.
At the heart of the Dale lies Reeth, a central village boasting three popular pubs, charming arts and crafts shops, and a delightful bakery offering local pies and breads. Fridays are a highlight in the area, as the village transforms into a bustling market, with stalls lining the streets selling a variety of eclectic goods.
In Reeth, you’ll discover a museum that illuminates the fascinating rural life of the Yorkshire Dales and its rich local heritage. Here visitors can explore decades of the area’s heritage, with exhibits spanning geological specimens to prehistoric discoveries and, naturally, equipment linked to its rich lead mining past.
Following their trip, one delighted guest said on TripAdvisor that the museum was a “wonderful surprise”. They said: “I love a museum, and I have visited my fair share, but this was a truly surprising little gem.
“I have never seen quite so much variety crammed into such a small space, and the range of information covering the local community in its history was wonderful. A great amount of detail is provided in a clear and understandable manner, combined with humorous and heartwarming local stories.”
For those eager to experience the lush landscapes of the valley, the Swale Trail is an absolute must. Whether tackled on foot or by bicycle, according to enthusiastic explorers, it’s a destination that justifies the effort.
Following their adventure, one visitor said: “Amazing views. We did this by ebike, but imagine you’d need quite a high fitness level for the Gunnerside to Keld route on pedal power alone. Gunnerside to Keld, however, has the best views. This route overall is actually one of the best trails around but seems relatively undiscovered.”
The area’s traditional allure is evident throughout the year, but it’s particularly enchanting during spring and summer when the hardy Swaledale sheep graze and beautiful wildflowers bloom amidst the stunning hay meadows. Even on the chilliest days, the valley continues to reveal a wealth of trails and hidden treasures.
NESTLED in the Scottish highlands is an island like no other.
Think – vibrant trees that change colour as the seasons do, calm water with a gentle breeze skimming over the surface and cosy cabins with log burners in…
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The island of Eilean Shona is what J.M. Barrie based Neverland onCredit: suppliedIt is located in the Inner Hebrides in ScotlandCredit: TripAdvisorThe island is the perfect place for a retreat in the wildernessCredit: supplied
What you are picturing is Eilean Shona, an island in the Inner Hebrides that has no cars, no roads and no shops.
In fact, only nine people permanently live on the island.
To add to its beauty, the island even inspired J.M Barrie’s Neverland in Peter Pan.
Despite being a private island, visitors can still book to stay on the island and to get there, the residents have to come and collect you by boat.
Once on the island, you can indulge in the ultimate detox from the modern world by heading on hikes, including to the island’s summit and to white sand beaches.
And to add to the magic, a spirits brand was created on Eilean Shona.
Sun Travel spoke to Ed Faulkner, co-founder of Sapling about the brand and the story behind it.
If someone were to planning a restorative road trip in the UK, where should the top stops be?
A Sapling inspired road trip would celebrate quiet luxury, slow living and a deep connection with the natural world.
It could begin at Knepp Wildland in West Sussex, where rewilded meadows and roaming wildlife surround peaceful treehouses.
Then move on to the ancient beech canopy of Blackwood Forest in Hampshire with its inviting woodland trails.
From there, the journey might continue to the historic Blean Woods in Kent and the tranquil off grid cabins at Elmley Nature Reserve.
End among the ancient Caledonian pines that frame the still waters of Loch Tay in Perthshire.
Along the way, the spirit of the trip comes alive in the simple moments, such as enjoying a vodka or gin and tonic after a long walk with the people you care about.
It is a wholesome and grounding pause that brings everyone closer.
It reflects exactly what Sapling stands for, which is connection, presence and celebrating nature together.
The island features no shops and no carsCredit: suppliedSpirits brand Sapling was also created on the islandCredit: supplied
Plus, our expert picks for UK staycation trips to banish post-summer blues – including free hidden gems for kids and £1.50 meals.
The brand focuses on sustainability and the environmentCredit: Alamy
About Sapling
ED Faulkner, co-founder of Sapling, spoke to Sun Travel about the brand…
Scotland’s long been famous for whisky. What inspired you to choose vodka, and did Eilean Shona play a part in that?
We chose vodka because we saw an opportunity to redefine what new luxury means in a category that can often feel excessive and instead focus on purity, quality and creating a spirit that genuinely gives back.
Vodka, at its best, offers a sense of subtle refinement that fits perfectly with our climate-positive ethos.
Eilean Shona played a significant part in the birth of Sapling, as it was where Ed and Ivo (the other founder) first saw the purpose of the brand take shape while volunteering after wildfires destroyed one hundred and fifty thousand trees in 2017.
What makes Scotland such a special place to link to your vodka?
Scotland’s dramatic and restorative landscapes make it an ideal home for Sapling, because they reflect both our connection to nature and our mission to be climate positive.
Scotland is rich in untouched natural beauty and has long been seen as a place to escape the noise and excess of everyday life, which fits naturally with our idea of new luxury.
Since starting Sapling, have you seen spirit tourism become more popular?
Yes, we have seen a clear rise in spirit tourism, driven by people wanting deeper and more authentic experiences that connect them to the provenance and purpose of what they drink.
How does your vodka help consumers connect to Scotland and nature?
Sapling helps people feel connected to Scotland and nature through our one bottle one tree initiative, which ensures that every purchase directly contributes to climate restoration across the UK.
This gives drinkers a tangible link to the landscapes that inspire us.
Have you found it hard to break into the vodka market?
Vodka felt natural for us because it aligns with the idea that first inspired the brand, which was the blend of reforestation by day and celebration by night.
Our founders also felt that the vodka category was ready for change, as traditional ideas of luxury in vodka have often centred on excess and nightlife.
I was in awe of the cavern’s striations and white globs of minerals dripping from its ceiling. The experience stuck with me, enough that in this week’s Wild, we’re exploring more about the geology of our local mountains.
And we’re in luck! This week, the Natural History Museum in Exposition Park debuted “Unearthed: Raw Beauty,” an exhibit of rare earth minerals, including several from Southern California.
Visitors will see blue cap tourmaline, crystals named after their blue tops, and other tourmaline crystals mined in San Diego. They’re estimated to be 100 million years old!
Tourmaline grows in Southern California inside rocks called pegmatites, which are “basically granite that had time to grow large crystals. These rocks form when hot magma cools and hardens into solid rock inside Earth’s crust,” according to the museum. (We’ll talk more about pegmatites in a minute.)
While at the opening night event for the exhibit, I spoke to two experts to better understand all that rocks and rolls around us: Aaron Celestian, the curator of mineral sciences at Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County and Kriss Leftwich, collections manager of mineral sciences at the Natural History Museum.
My main question for them was: How can hikers better understand what they’re seeing and hiking over and around?
Let’s dive into what I learned, which I’ve compiled for you into a brief beginner’s guide. It rocks!
A lone hiker takes in sweeping views of the Santa Monica Mountains at Eagle Rock along the Backbone Trail in Topanga State Park.
(Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Times)
What minerals can be observed in the Santa Monica Mountains?
The sediment and minerals of the Santa Monica Mountains were formed over millions of years, including through a process of ocean transgression and regression, Celestian said.
As Earth went through its natural periods of warming and cooling, ice sheets would melt and grow, causing sea levels to rise and fall. When sea levels rose, water moved further inland, covering ancient beaches and sandstone in layers of marine sediment, including shells and skeletons of sea animals. When the sea levels would fall, the water would recess, causing more beach material and sediments close to the shore to layer over the marine layers, he said.
Parts of the Santa Monicas were previously a beach-type environment that eventually developed into sandstone that we see while out hiking, Celestian said.
As this geologic report on the Santa Monica Mountains points out, “Sediments that were deposited in marine settings millions of year (sic) ago now sit high in ridges and peaks of the park as a result of tectonic forces and the uplift.”
The sunset seen from the Ray Miller Backbone Trail in Point Mugu State Park.
(Jaclyn Cosgrove / Los Angeles Times)
The Santa Monica Mountains were formed over millions of years through a process called “compression,” where tectonic plates force land upward, and tectonic folding, where the rock bends instead of breaking.
Celestian said the Santa Monica Mountains originally ran along the coastline, but “they started to rotate horizontally … [because] there’s a fault that actually rotated the Santa Monicas perpendicular.”
“They call them the Transverse Ranges because they got twisted,” he added.
Because of the diversity of our mountains and how they were formed, geologists (or lucky hikers) might find surprising micro-environments with unexpected minerals.
One way these can be formed is through the cooling process of a magma chamber. “It’s releasing lots of water, and that water is like a convection cell, and it circulates through it, and it concentrates metals in various areas. So you can get these little pockets of random crystals that you’ve never seen before because of how the water cooled,” deep underground, Celestian said.
While out hiking recently in the Santa Monica Mountains, he found lots of invertebrate fossils at the top of a mountain. And then he found a “huge pocket of quartz underneath a tree” with nothing else around it, likely due to a geological process that developed a micro-environment.
A close look at a tourmaline on feldspar on display at the “Unearthed: Raw Beauty” exhibit at the Natural History Museum.
(Ronaldo Bolaños / Los Angeles Times)
What types of minerals might we notice while hiking in the San Gabriels?
As you hike in the San Gabriels, you may notice striations in rock walls, like large white rock with little black veins. That was likely a quartz-rich rock with mica, a flaky, “very glittery” mineral that will resemble the texture of eye shadow, Leftwich said.
“When it’s black, it’s biotite, and when it’s purple, it’s lepidolite,” Leftwich said, adding there are several other types of mica.
If lucky, hikers might observe pegmatite, which is essentially a rock with large crystals forming within it, she said.
Leftwich said the pegmatite on display at the museum could have been in a cooling magma chamber or a similar environment. The large hunk of rock — visitors are encouraged to touch it — features large plates called albite or cleavelandite, which are types of feldspar, a group of minerals “distinguished by the presence of alumina and silica in their chemistry,” according to Minerals Education Coalition.
Celestian said the reason that hikers might observe a lot of quartz, feldspar and mica in the San Gabriel Mountains is because the range is “mostly like old basement volcano rocks.”
“It was like magma chambers that cooled down deep in the earth, and over time, that got pushed up to the surface, and that’s what we have in the San Gabriels and surrounding mountains,” he said.
A tourmaline on quartz on display at the “Unearthed: Raw Beauty” exhibit. The piece is from the tourmaline King Mine in San Diego County and is estimated to be 100 million years old.
(Ronaldo Bolaños / Los Angeles Times)
Are there any tools I can carry as a hiker to help me identify rocks?
Celestian has tested apps that claim to be able to identify rocks and has found they’re correct only about 10% to 15% of the time.
“A lizard is going to have the same morphology every single time. A bird is going to have the same morphology every single time. A mineral is not,” Celestian said.
Hence why it’s so hard to develop an app. Calcite, he said, can grow in hundreds of different forms, making it near impossible for an app to recognize it just by using a phone’s camera.
Still, the best tool for beginners is your phone’s camera because you can take photos of the rock in question for later research.
Taking pictures and “just trying to figure out your environment is really exciting,” Celestian said. “It matters a lot because all of the resources that we have available to us today came from the earth, and knowing more about how that came about, how much time it takes to create these things, adds a different perspective of Earth’s resources and how we appreciate them.”
A pegmatite rock on display at “Unearthed: Raw Beauty.” Attendees are allowed to touch and interact with the rock as part of the exhibit.
(Ronaldo Bolaños / Los Angeles Times)
To take the most useful images for mineral identification, I’d recommend reading the rock key from the Mineralogical Society of America before heading out. It will help you understand the types of pictures you need to take (especially since on our public lands, you’ll be leaving the rock where you found it).
For example, the first question on the rock key is, “Is the rock made of crystal grains? (Does it have a lot of flat, shiny faces — maybe tiny to small — that reflect light like little mirrors? You may need to use a magnifier.)” To answer that question, you’d want to ensure you captured those characteristics in your photographs.
A piece of gold stands on on display at “Unearthed: Raw Beauty.” The piece is from the Mother Lode District in El Dorado County.
(Ronaldo Bolaños / Los Angeles Times)
How can a hiker learn more about our local geology?
One of my biggest takeaways from my conversations with Celestian and Leftwich was our local geology varies widely, and thus, there’s a lot to learn. But that complexity opens up a great opportunity to find community.
You can join one of several local geology groups where hopefully you’ll find not only knowledge but also new friends. And for anyone wanting to dive a little deeper, there are local caving groups like the SoCal Grotto, which teaches its members how to explore safely and responsibly, along with hosting experts at its meetings where members learn about a range of earth science topics.
A final thought
“Look under the rock before you pick it up — because of spiders and snakes,” Celestian said.
3 things to do
(Jaclyn Cosgrove / Los Angeles Times)
1. Celebrate New Year’s Day hiking around L.A. California State Parks will host its annual First Day Hikes on Jan. 1 at more than 60 of its parks, including across L.A. At the Santa Susana Pass State Historic Park near Simi Valley, hikers can arrive by 11 a.m. for a stroll past its narrow canyons and hulking rocks. Mount San Jacinto State Park will host a snowshoeing hike at 11 a.m. for hikers willing to take the tram up. Or if you’re perhaps feeling like a later start, Malibu Creek State Park will host a guided night hike at 5 p.m., where hikers will trek under an almost full moon. Learn more, including how to register, at parks.ca.gov.
2. Nurture native plants in Agoura National Park Service and Santa Monica Mountains Fund need volunteers from 9 a.m. to noon Saturday to restore native plants around Cheeseboro Canyon. Participants will plant hundreds of live plants grown from locally collected seed. Register at eventbrite.com.
3. Capture the sunset in Borrego Springs The Anza-Borrego Foundation will host photographer Paulette Donnellon to teach a sunset photography class from 1:30 to 6:30 p.m. Jan. 3 at the park. Donnellon will share tips on how to shoot wildlife and landscapes before leading students into the desert for both golden hour and “blue hour” just after sunset. The class is $100. Register at theabf.org.
The must-read
Joseph Brambila vanished on Mt. Whitney in early November. This image is from a previous climb in the summer of 2025.
(Joseph Brambila)
Like many Southern California hikers, 21-year-old southeast L.A. County resident Joseph Brambila had fallen in love with Mt. Whitney. Only a four-hour drive north of L.A. to its trailhead, Mt. Whitney is the nation’s tallest mountain outside of Alaska. In early November, Brambila was reported missing, his last known location being Mt. Whitney. Times staff writer Jack Dolan spoke to Brambila’s family about the budding alpinist, highlighting what kept Brambila coming back to the mountain. “He always said he loves to disconnect from the real world,” his girlfriend, Darlene Molina, said. “He just wanted to be out there and enjoy life. … It was just him, nature, and God.” On Monday, the Inyo County Sheriff’s Office announced it had recovered the body of a young male hiker that fit the description of Brambila. He is the second person believed to have died near a steep, icy section of trail known as the 99 Switchbacks.
In reading Dolan’s story, I felt like I got a brief glimpse into the excitement and love that Brambila carried with him into the mountains. It’s an energy we can all relate to, one that keeps us returning for more.
Happy, safe adventuring,
P.S.
This is the final Wild for 2025. If you’d like to catch up on all we’ve covered, head over to our archives or my author page. The most-read Wild of the year was this piece about Austin Nicassio, founder of Accessible Off-Road, a nonprofit aimed at bringing off-road mobility devices to parks and trails around L.A. If you’re reading this as an email, consider replying and letting me know what you’d like to see more of. Yes, I read your last emails and I do plan to write more in 2026 about hikes in Orange and Ventura County. I love hearing from you and I cannot thank you enough for your support of The Wild. Happy holidays, friends!
For more insider tips on Southern California’s beaches, trails and parks, check out past editions of The Wild. And to view this newsletter in your browser, click here.
