Space, Endless Space

Driving in the Yorkshire Dales
After years of watching Siegfried, James and Tristan in All Creatures Great and Small, it was stunning to see the Yorkshire Dales in their true natural beauty. The Dales are extraordinarily spacious. Human activity ( and there’s a lot of it) is nevertheless dwarfed by their sheer magnitude and grandeur. The “mountains” are mostly without trees, and much like the Australian variety, they are smooth, rounded and worn down.

Our plan was to go to the Aysgarth Falls. The sign told that these falls were created from alternating layers of hard limestone and soft shale. The River Ure has worn away the shale making “steps” in the river over which the water cascades. There are three main falls - upper, middle and lower. The walk to the first two is gentle so we did those, leaving the more challenging lower falls walk to others. It was a lovely day for walking and the sun even graced us with its presence for most of it. I hope that the pictures might give you a hint of their beauty.

After Aysgarth (which sounds like a place in Middle Earth doesn’t it?), we drove on to Sedbergh, supposedly a book town, on the far edge of the Dales in Cumbria. There at 3pm we had a fabulous pub lunch of steak and ale pie with lots of vegetables and gravy. A perfect meal for walkers, even modest ones like us. We managed to go to one bookstore but Hay-on-Wye this place is not. I found a very small book of A. E. Housman’s poetry, a second edition hard cover but at 42 quid I thought that they were asking too much.

The drive home was gorgeous and we managed a few more photos and a video of the Howgill Fells. Wikipedia tells us that the name Howgill derives from the Old Norse word “haugr” meaning a hill or barrow, plus gil meaning a narrow valley. There a couple of “Marilyns” among the Howgills, that is, mountains over 600 metres. They are simply stunning. We arrived home after 6pm, happy with the day’s wanderings.

Here are the words to the song I couldn’t help but sing as we walked to the upper Aysgarth Falls today. It called “The Keeper & The Doe”:

“The keeper did a hunting go
Under his cloak he carried a bow
All for to shoot the merry little doe
Among the leaves so green-o
… Jackie boy, master, sing you well, very well
Hey down, ho down, derry, derry down
… Among the leaves so green-o
To me hey down, hey down
Ho down, derry, derry down
Among the leaves so green-o
The first doe, she did cross the plain
The keeper fetched her back again
Where she is now she may remain
Among the leaves so green-o
… The next doe she did cross the brook
The keeper fetched her back with his crook
Where she is now, you may go and look
Among the leaves so green-o
… The sixth doe, she did cross the plain
But he with his hounds did turn her again
There he did hunt in a very merry vein
Among the leaves so green-o”

PS Brush with fame alert: Pete our neighbour and landlord told us one of the horses in the paddock over the road, named Grace, is a film horse. She starred in Peaky Blinders ridden by the gorgeous Cillian Murphy!Baca selengkapnya