Before you listen to this BBC podcast, I want to tell you why I love podcasting. Hi, my name's Tommy Dixon,

and I make podcasts for the BBC. I'm a big fan of stories, always loved a good book. But when I started

commuting for my first job, I discovered podcasts. I was blown away by how a creative idea and the right

mixture of sounds could take you into a whole new world full of incredible stories. You know, the type that make you go, wow. And that kind of inspired me to

give it a go myself, which to cut a long story short led to a BBC training scheme and a whole

new career giving other people that exact same feeling. So if you want to hear amazing stories

that make you go wow like I did, they're just a tap or click away on BBC

sounds. This is a BBC Radio 4 download. You're listening to me, Claire Balding with another

edition of ramblings. You can hear the river wharf rushing on my right because today I'm in

Ilkley at the start of the Dale's Way and for this series of

ramblings we're following the whole of a long distance path we did it once before with

St Oswald's Way in Northumberland and this time top of my list of long distance paths I wanted to

do was the Dale's Way so you can imagine my distress on the journey up here this morning when the tail end of

Hurricane Bertha was rushing through and crashing down with rain and even lightning across the Yorkshire

Dales. All we've done is actually delay our start by only 45 minutes and it's cleared up and

there are big puddles but I'm hoping that the rain

has actually fallen if we get caught out with one shower that's fine but I just didn't really want

to start in in a proper downpour but what a place to start and Sarah Howcroft is alongside me I mean

this bridge doesn't that just you, epitomise Yorkshire strength

in a way? Yes, it does. It's iconic, really. I mean, it's recognised by people that do the

Dale's Way and it's beautiful. It's a beautiful bridge. If you want to follow us on the map,

by the way, we're on Explorer 297, which is Lower

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