Residents fume as tiny Yorkshire village ‘swallowed’ by thousands of tourists

The Yorkshire Three Peaks Challenge is known as one of the region’s most popular hikes. The challenge sets off from Horton-in-Ribblesdale and takes on the peaks of Pen-y-ghent, Whernside and Ingleborough, usually in this order, and in under 12 hours.

Whilst, for many, this walk is a popular activity, for residents of the picturesque village, Horton-in-Ribblesdale, the walk can be somewhat of a nuisance. As Horton-in-Ribblesdale is considered the starting point for the Three Peaks challenge, visitors have become a bit of an issue over the years.

According to Yorkshire Live, locals have reported hikers ditching their cars and making disturbances at early hours of the morning.

Norma Graham has been “lucky enough” to live in a bungalow out of the way of the tourist car parks, but claims others in the village have been affected more by the heaps of cars flocking to take part in the popular challenge.

Norma was born in Settle where her parents were farmers, which is the next biggest town to Horton-in-Ribblesdale, she married her army husband and moved across the world as he was deployed, the pair eventually settled and lived in Darlington during their retirement.

She moved to Horton-in-Ribblesdale four years ago when her husband sadly died to be closer to her family and home, she claims she will never leave now.

Norma said: “It’s a lovely area, its God’s own country – I will never leave, I’m settled. I live in a bungalow just up the road.

“Some people get annoyed with visitors but I think it would be nice for them to get out of the cities like Leeds and Bradford. People come at weekends to walk. My daughter and her husband have a field in the village and they open it up for car parking when it gets busy – they charge £4 – to help with the parking issues in the village.

“If they didn’t open that they would be parking everywhere. At the other end of the village, there is the National Parks car park but it gets full, so they park on the roadside. At weekends it’s a really long queue, and some people don’t want to pay to park.

“People are respectful, there isn’t much litter at all, people are pretty good – they take their litter home. It helps local businesses too, there are two pubs so it helps them.

“A lot of the villagers don’t like all these people coming in but, you can’t blame people for wanting to come out of the towns to enjoy all this scenery.”

Another resident, Tom Blake, who has co-run his business, Contour Campervan Furniture, with his partner from his parents holiday home in Horton-in-Ribblesdale for the past two years, claims to love living in the village. He said: “Me and my partner climb quite a lot and spend a lot of time in the outdoors so it’s kind of perfect for us here.

“Although there are limited amenities and everything, we’ve been looking to expand our business but there is just nothing round here so we’ve ended up getting a place near Kendal so we will probably end up moving closer there – but for the time being it has everything we need.

“The village can get busy because of the Three Peaks but where our house is it’s not too bad because we’re kind of out of the way but, I know it is a problem at the other end of the village.

“Somebody off the mountain rescue team who lives on that side of the village and he’s got two young girls and his house is opposite one of the big laybys that people park in and it can be a real problem – people go to the toilet in his bushes and exposing themselves in front of his kids, it’s pretty bad.

“Everyone is shouting early in the morning too. Parking is an issue but traffic doesn’t really tend to be.

“I quite like it because it gives a little bit of a buzz to the village when there is never really anything else going on – it doesn’t bother me but, it does bother other people who are more affected by it.