I felt stuck. In my head, I rummaged through my photo collection. I discarded foggy moody atmospheric mornings like this one. I rejected bright summer meadows and crisp snowy winter walks as not quite projecting the ambience I want to think about on this dismal January day.
Here’s what I’ve chosen. It’s an image that’s more than six years old now, but it sums up much of what we loved best about our years in France.
Our walking group had played its part in organising a walk for ramblers from all over the region. We’d arranged signage, helped sponsors set up their stall, marshalled the event, walked ourselves, and handed out certificates at the end before the visiting walkers departed. Now we could relax.
Here we are in the mediaeval town square in Mirepoix, unwinding over a good and copious meal with plenty of wine. The sun is shining. The afternoon stretches lazily ahead of us. We’re among friends. This is an ambiance chaleureuse at its finest.
We went for a walk from Leighton Reservoir this week. It’s in many ways a bleak, bare, sometimes boggy landscape, and this suited our mood in a bleak, bare post-Brexit week. The view is softened at the edges by the rolling, green, stone wall-skirted Yorkshire Dales which lie beyond the heathery moors.
But look what we found as we consulted our Ordnance Survey map. These were the places we passed, or could see at a distance:
Sourmire Moor
Gollinglith
Baldcar Head
Jenny Twigg and her daughter Tib (Two natural stone stacks towering out of this boggy moorland landscape. We didn’t get as near to them as we’d have liked this time)
Grewelthorpe Moor
Benjy Guide
Sievey Hill
Horse Helks
Cat Hole
Jenny Twigg and her daughter Tib (Wikimedia Commons)
Really, where else could we be but Yorkshire?
Postscript: Just at the end we met this little chap, a just-fledged thrush. We hope he (she?)’s ok, because he just about managed to fly rather stumblingly off to a safer place than the track where we spotted him.
The story is – there is no story to tell about our walk near East Witton.
It was cold, frosty but bright so we stepped out energetically. The day went on to be warm, breezy and sunny. There was only one stile to climb over. The ground was firm and frosty, but neither icy nor muddy. Nobody slipped or fell over or got injured.
The landscape was just right. The gently undulating farmland of the Yorkshire Dales gave way to moorland whose picturesque bleakness was enhanced by the occasional lonely tree. We’d pause to take in the long-distance views across the Dales. And as we returned through woodland to East Witton once more, there was a proper English parish church just asking to be photographed. Nobody was displeased by the views.
Our two pauses were ideal. Mid morning, we had picture-postcard moorland views in front of us, and the solid protection of a sturdy drystone wall behind. We ate our lunchtime sandwiches in sheltered bosky woodland, with convenient benches in the form of tree trunks. Nobody got cold, or wet, or lost their sandwiches.
The energetic uphill stretches were all before lunch. Our path afterwards returned us gently to the valley floor. So we got back to base after a gently-challenging workout. Nobody was exhausted or fed up.
So there’s nothing at all to tell you.
Oh hang on. This will have to serve as our banner news headline. ‘Hiker loses gloves on Wensleydale walk’. That was me. First one glove vanished, then the other. But as anyone who knows me will tell you, this is not news at all. It’s what I do most weeks during the winter.
I first walked from Jervaulx to Jervaulx last April, and wrote about it here. However, I failed to lead my fellow ramblers along the same route later that month as I’d said I would, because it rained…. and rained. I’d promised them the walk though, and today was the day: bright, sunny, blustery – a perfect winter hike. Except for one thing. Those floods that have dominated British news this winter are still making their presence felt.
The ruins of Jervaulx.
Our route today didn’t take us through pastureland. Sheep aren’t very good at being knee-deep in mud. It took us through soggy fields, and past lake after lake after lake: waters that simply were not there last time I took this route. It was all very pretty. Less pretty was the scene at stiles. Look at us skidding and sliding, trying to pick the shallower puddles as we waited out turn to get from one field to another.
We’re British though, always plucky in adversity. We soldiered on, sometimes a little weary of heaving mud-crusted boots along sticky, sludgy paths. But nobody fell over, nobody lost their sandwiches in the mud. Everybody enjoyed those vistas over the Dales, the starkly beautiful skeletal outlines of winter trees, the blue skies, dappled with characterful cloud. Were we glad to have made the effort? Well, I was, and I think my steadfast and dependable companions were too.
I’m at university this week. The University of Blogging. This seat of learning, which has no rector, no library and confers no degrees, runs a programme regularly hosted by WordPress,and aims to bring together people who from all over the world, keen to hone their writing and presentation skills, and to help each other to Write a Better Blog.
Today’s assignment:
Publish a post you’d like your ideal audience member to read.
I’ve chosen to write for one of you. We haven’t met. We don’t live on the same continent. But we’re ‘blogging friends’ who enjoy one another’s posts and often say so. You say you like the posts I write about walking in the Yorkshire Dales. I like the posts in which you too describe your walks, often more extensive than mine, taking place over several days. You stride beside me – virtually of course – as I tramp along the leaf mould paths of a dappled English woodland. I stop to gaze across the green and undulating hills at the lattice work of ancient fields, divided by drystone walls, and share the view with you courtesy of my camera.
Except… I haven’t. Not lately. Those floods I wrote about a couple of weeks ago are an ever-present danger to some. And even for those who haven’t had flooded homes to contend with, the weekly rhythm has changed. Walking is quite simply not on. The other day, fed up with the lack of exercise, I took myself off to walk along country roads instead. I’d not been going ten minutes when I met a deep trough as wide as the road, as deep as my ankles, and as long as… well, I don’t know. It went beyond the next bend, anyhow, and I went home. The fields are home to seagulls who bob about on the choppy waters. The paths are streams. The streams are rivers. And the rivers are seas.
Quiz question. Which is the path, and which the brook?
A path through the woods.
Brian can’t wait to get home.
i) Quiz question: which is the path, and which the brook?
ii) This, I’m afraid, is a path.
iii) Brian-from-Bolton simply can’t stand getting his paws muddy. He’s urging me home – NOW.
But I’m keen to get out and about again as soon as I can. And I hope you’ll come with me, in a virtual sort of way, when I report back.
I’m not so blinkered as to believe that Yorkshire has all the best bits of scenery. I’ve had days to recharge the soul in every English county from south to north, from west to east, enjoying stirring uplands, gentle verdant hillsides, sky-filled flatlands, slowly-flowing rivers and tranquilly tinkling streams, and the constantly-changing views from the beach at the seaside.
All the same, what we saw whilst out walking today gave every picture postcard of anywhere outside the Yorkshire Dales a run for its money.
John’s view of Yorkshire, as described on his T-shirt, is the correct one.
From Pateley Bridge, set in the heart of Nidderdale (Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty), we energetically panted and clambered through Guisecliff Wood, whilst looking down at the village of Glasshouses below. We emerged, puffing for breath at the top, One way, we could look across the Daleside landscape of ancient field systems and stone-built settlements, to the vale of York beyond.
Looking across towards the Dales.
The other way were the moors, no longer bleak, because this is heather time. We breathed in the intoxicating smell that I like to buy potted up as rich, almost peaty flavoured heather honey. We stared, almost mesmerised at those carpets of blooms stretching away from us, mile after mile: not lilac, not lavender, not violet nor damson – simply that special low-key subtle purple that only heather can deliver.
Marching through the heather.
Past Yorke’s Folly: it’s said it was built in 1810, commissioned by the local landowner, John Yorke of Bewerley Hall, who was casting about for some means to keep his labourers in employment in a time of economic depression. These men received a shilling and a loaf of bread a day for their efforts.
Yorke’s Folly: a resting place for weary walkers to enjoy the view.
Then it was back to woodland again – very English woodland, with a full green canopy, not yet ready to turn to autumnal colours. Skrikes Wood, Nought Bank, Fishpond Wood.
Skrikes Wood.
Then back along a few final paths before returning to Pateley, and a very welcome pub lunch.
