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, once 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, this time downhill, and back along the other side of the valley, just a short distance across from where I climbed up.
After parking up and passing through the campsite its a level gravel track following the beck with some fantastic views of the lake district.
Crossing Dovedale Beck using this footbridge.
More views as I followed the path and the beck uphill, with some nice little waterfalls.
Here is the first view of Dove Crag in the distance. Yep, that hill in the far distance is what I'm about to climb 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 track I followed 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.
Cooling my water...
...and my feet.
I also did a bit of wildlife spotting.
Break over, it's time to start the steeper, uphill trek.
It seems the camera got as tired as me heading uphill. This blurry shot 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.
The path follows 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 the plan and headed back downhill.
A zoomed in view of the cave.
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, stoney, sheepy.
And the view from the top. This also captures the route I took here along the bottom of the valley. The way back follows 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.
Heading back down the same path down the crag, as it leveled out and I approached the footbridge and plunge pool I took another path off to the left. This path was a mix of grassy track and stoney scramble through the wooded area.
One last view of Dove Crag as I headed back to the campsite, Inn and Tiggy.
The path rejoins the original route by some buildings, 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!