Almost every Yorkshire Dales footpath will be open by the weekend.

The good news for walkers comes a day after the Government announced that Britain was officially free of foot and mouth disease.

Rangers from the Yorkshire Dales National Park are taking down "footpath closed" signs this week.

The move will open up hundreds of miles of paths and bridleways in the south of the park, near Skipton. Footpaths in and around Malham, Settle, Grassington and Burnsall will re-open, along with the Pennine Way and Dales Way. It ends ten months of restrictions imposed last March when the foot and mouth epidemic hit the district.

Jon Avison, YDNP head of park management, said there would be only a small number of footpaths still closed. These crossed farms that had not completed secondary cleansing.

He said he was confident these would be open in the next few weeks when the Department for Environment Food and Rural Affairs had completed the clean up.

"By the weekend 98 percent of footpaths will be open to the public, with the outlook for opening the last two percent looking good," he said.

"Today we start to rebuild and encourage the public back to this great national park in the knowledge that the overwhelming majority of footpaths and bridleways are open."

He stressed that the small number that remained closed would be signed.

For details of the remaining restrictions, people are asked to contact one of the national park centres at Grassington, Malham, Asgarth Falls, Clapham, Hawes, Reeth or Sedbergh.