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Grindleton Heritage Trail

The Grindleton Heritage Trail was designed to commemorate the Millennium and to provide an insight into an appreciation of the local area and its history. The Millenium Committee gratefully acknowledges the support of the community and the dedicated efforts of particular local individuals in producing this walk and leaflet. Many thanks to Ribblesdale High School whose pupils produced the waymarker plaques and to Ultraframe UK Ltd. for providing materials.

The Heritage Trail is a walk around the village exploring its historical features. The Heritage Trail leaflet provides information, and incorporates a map.

Walks on the fells

The Forest of Bowland (including Grindleton) is covered by the Ordnance Survey Explorer OL41 map (1:25000), and the Harvey Forest of Bowland map (1:25000). The Lancashire County Council Countryside Service offers advice on walk safety. Grindleton Fell can be accessed easily from the village by walking up Whitehall Lane at the top of the village to the White Hall, turning right up the bridleway (Green Lane) and up onto the fell past Cob House. Note that Grindleton Forest is only accessible using the public rights of way through it (green dashes on the OS map).

Below are websites and documents offering walking routes and other activities in the Forest of Bowland and Pendle Hill (and other parts of Lancashire):

• Festival Bowland events for 2010 (4MB .pdf document);
• Forest of Bowland walking routes from the AONB official site;
• Walks and Pubs in the Forest of Bowland with the overview map of walks;
• Walking Britain - Lancashire;
• walks from visitlancashire.com official website of the Lancashire and Blackpool Tourism Board.

Ribble Way

The Ribble Way passes through Grindleton. It is a 65 mile route and follows the course of the River Ribble from its source at Ribblehead in the Yorkshire Dales, to the estuary at Preston. The route passes through a variety of landscapes including limestone gorge, open moorland and tidal marsh.

The LCC Countryside Service page on the Ribble Way has downloadable maps of the sections. The Long Distance Walkers Association website has further information on the Ribble Way.

Greendale Millennium Wood

This is one of over 1,000 woods across the UK cared for by the Woodland Trust. Greendale Wood was one of several Millennium projects in Grindleton.

The whole site was planted from December 2000 to January 2001 with a mix of 7,660 native trees and shrubs, of British provenance. These are: English oak, silver birch, ash, wild cherry, field maple, common alder, crab apple and with shrubs of rowan, guelder rose, hazel, hawthorn, blackthorn, goat willow, and bird cherry.

A large number of locally grown damson trees were planted to line a path from Buck Street. Areas of open grassland have been left to form the paths and glades, and an open area also left on the steepest part of the bank, which held the greatest variety of wild flowers.

You are welcome to visit the wood. Further details are available on the Greendale Wood pages of the Woodland Trust website.

A printable map of Greendale Wood is available here.

April 2009 - Extension To The Wood

In April 2006 the Woodland Trust was gifted an area of land which lies directly to the north of the original site. A condition of the gift was that the grazier of the field could continue this activity until April 2009. The extension is a total of 1.82 hectares. On 6th & 7th March 2009, the school and villagers assisted the Woodland Trust and Lancashire Environmental Fund in planting 2000 trees in preparation for public access.