Priest’s Hole Cave is a naturally formed cavern located on Dove Crag in the Lake District, popular with hikers, climbers, and wild campers as a shelter. The cave’s name may be related to its past use as a hermit cell or possibly a place for hiding Catholic priests during persecution. It’s known for its excellent views of the Lake District and its own visitors’ book.
Not sure how I found out about this one, but I’ve had a few visits to near the cave, the first being an aborted trip to stay overnight in the cave. This time I decided to get closer and over onto the top of Dove Crag.
Parking at the Brotherswater Inn the route takes you west through the camp site, which has a handy camp site shop, following Dovedale Beck between the Crags up to Dove Crag. The route starts off quite level and then gets steeper up a rather tricky stone path between the crags and past the cave and onto the top of Dove Crag. The way back follows the same steep path downhill, and back along the other side of the valley.
After parking up at the Inn head west through the campsite to Hartsop Hall. Turn left down a level gravel track following Dovedale Beck with some fantastic views of the lake district.
Keep following the track in pretty much a straight line until you get to a footbridge crossing Dovedale Beck.
More views as I followed the grassy path and the beck uphill through Dovedale, with some nice little waterfalls along the way.
Further along the path is the first view of Dove Crag in the distance. Yep, that hill in the far distance is where the route takes you to the top of.
Crossing back over the beck at this footbridge I took a break. Here you can see Dove Crag getting closer.
Looking back the way I came you can see the route so far along the bottom of the valley.
It was a hot day, so I took the opportunity to have a break in this little plunge pool by the footbridge. Though there are plenty of other little pools along the route.
Cooling my water…
…and my feet.
I also did a bit of wildlife spotting.
Break over, feet and water cooled, it’s time to start the steeper, uphill trek.
It seems the camera got as tired as me heading uphill. This blurry shot kind of shows the steepness of the path at some points.
A better couple of pics, showing the path as a mix of gravel, stones and grass.
Getting closer to the cave, in the top half of this pic a diagonal black shape.
The path continues around the bottom of the crag side. You can see here how much of an uphill climb it is to get into the cave itself. On a previous trip to the cave we planned to stay the night but, on seeing this climb, we aborted that plan and headed back downhill.
A zoomed in view of the cave and the climb to it…this is the closest I’ll be getting.
One final pic of the cave as I headed along the path to get onto the top of the crag.
And here is what the top of Dove Crag looks like, grassy, stony and sheepy.
And the view from the top of Dove Crag. This also captures the route I took here along the bottom of the valley. The way back heads through the wooded area on the left of the valley.
As mentioned earlier at the plunge pool, it was a hot day, the sheep had a good plan to stay as cool as possible.
After taking in the views it was time to head back, heading down the same path down the crag to the footbridge by the plunge pool. At this point I took another path off to the left to avoid heading back down the exact same path I’d already been on and see some different views of the area. This path was a mix of grassy track and stoney scramble through a wooded area.
One last look back at Dove Crag as I headed back to the campsite, Inn and Tiggy.
The path re-joins the earlier route by Hartsop Hall, it’s then just a case of following the path back through the camp site with a quick stop off at the campsite shop for a celebratory Coca Cola and Ice Cream!
All the Lake District hikes: