Disabled ramblers will break new ground next week when they take to the rough terrain of the Yorkshire Dales in tough, off-road wheelchairs.

Blakethwaite Lead Mine, Gunnerside, Swaledale

The Yorkshire Dales National Park Authority is hosting a visit by members of the Disabled Ramblers group in the North of the park. The trip will entail travelling in electric wheelchairs up and down tracks around Reeth and Gunnerside in Swaledale.

National park rangers will provide back-up vehicles for the group next Tuesday and Wednesday. It will be the first time the Yorkshire Dales authority has put on such an event.

Rachel Briggs, the YDNPA’s access development officer, said: “The use of off-road wheelchairs will provide opportunities for people with disabilities to explore parts of the National Park that would normally be inaccessible to them.

“It’s going beyond the flat, surfaced road we would normally provide for a wheel chair user.

”The visit will help us to improve access for disabled people in these off-road wheelchairs and hopefully it will be the first of many.”

The disabled ramblers will also be given a guided tour of historic sites in the area, as part of National Archaeology Week.

Robert White, the authority’s senior conservation archaeologist, said: “Reeth High Moor contains some extensive lead mines including Old Gang Smelting Mills on which we have done some conservation work, so we will be having a look at them.

“We will also be looking at some of the multi-period historic landscapes and field systems elsewhere in Swaledale.”

The Disabled Ramblers’ Organisation grew from the Disabled Drivers’ Association in the early 1990s and includes outdoor enthusiasts who have impaired mobility and who use electrically powered pavement buggies, scooters, powerchairs and manual wheelchairs to get into the countryside.