Walking Route: Muker to Gunnerside

A seven-mile Swaldedale Circular through the glorious Yorkshire Dales

Swaledale in North Yorkshire’s Yorkshire Dales National Park, near Muker. © Simon Whaley

Note:

I walked this route on 30th April 2025 and this article describes the route on the ground as it was then. Always take a map with you when exploring the countryside.

The Yorkshire Dales National Park extends across 841 square miles of North Yorkshire (with a little bit in Cumbria and Lancashire), and includes popular dales (valleys) like Wensleydale (as in the cheese) and Langstrothsdale. The most northerly of the big dales is Swaledale, where the River Swale sweeps eastwards, across the county towards the market town of Richmond, and then on to join the River Ure, and Ouse, through the county town of York.

Swaledale is littered with the national park’s iconic stone huts, used as animal shelters during the harshest of weather conditions, and this route passes one that is open for the public to explore.

There’s a handy car park at the village of Muker, a quiet hamlet on the banks of Straw Beck, where this walk begins. Indeed, it is because this is where Straw Beck meets the River Swale that historians believed the area was settled. Muker is a corruption of the old Norse words mjór akr, which mean “the narrow, newly cultivated field.” As you stroll around here…