Wharfedale views

Upper Wharfedale is the Yorkshire dale I am most familiar with and I love the sweeping views once you climb up the valley side. One afternoon I walked from Scargill House to Conistone Pie (not a pie! Just an outcrop of rocks.) Part of the path follows the Dalesway long distance trail. The stormy weather made for some fabulous and quickly changing cloudscapes. It was very windy, with a high chill factor, but I only got hailed on once.

Hardy Yorkshire sheep and dry stone walls are a feature of the valley. The sheep often seem as curious about us as we are about them.

Kettlewell St Mary's

The Anglican Parish Church of St Mary's in Kettlewell is a favourite of mine. Modestly sized and well-kept, it sits attractively on the edge of the village, in a large churchyard that is managed for wildlife and wildflowers. The tower is Georgian but the church itself is Victorian, a replacement for a previous building that was found unsafe and demolished.

You arrive up a little lane to a lychgate, a covered gateway. Lychgates were traditionally where coffins (or shrouded bodies) were laid to await the funeral. (See HERE for more info). This one only dates back to 1921, although I suppose there may have been an older structure.

The church interior is relatively light and bright. It has some lovely stained glass. (You know I adore stained glass!) Some of the themes are rather sombre, since several of the windows are memorials to military personnel, including two sons of the Holdsworth family. (The Holdsworths originally owned Scargill House, my accommodation for the week). I featured the East Window on my blog HERE.

A Dales village in winter

I had a mooch around Kettlewell in the rain and hail. The Dales villages have a very different character in winter than in summer. There are few, if any, tourists (though the conference and retreat centre at Scargill House does bring visitors to Kettlewell). There isn't the summer buzz but the quiet has its own charm.

Kettlewell still has a traditional red telephone box (probably quite necessary, as cellphone coverage is very patchy) and it adds a touch of brightness to the centre of the village. The photos above and below show the views along Kettlewell Beck, up and down stream, as it flows down to join the River Wharfe.

At the top of the village, the old maypole sits in a little garden and the road leads up to St Mary's church, which is set back on the right.

Kettlewell Beck was fast-flowing but not overfull or doing anything nasty.

It was dull enough to take a few slow-shutter speed photos of the churning water, even without a filter.

Bench with a view

Scargill House (where I was staying on my break) sits in a small estate: a series of limestone terraces, mostly wooded, climbing up the hillside behind. There are traces of a couple of very old, ruined stone dwellings up there, believed to be post-Roman, possibly shepherds' huts or small cottages, evidence that the valley has been inhabited and farmed for centuries. Scargill House itself dates from the 18th century. It was originally a gentleman's residence used for hunting and fishing.

In the late 1950s, it was sold to the Church of England and became a Christian community, run as a conference centre and retreat house. In 2008 that venture folded and the house was put up for sale again. Under the leadership of a close friend of mine, a new charitable trust, the Scargill Movement, was formed and the property was bought and has since been revitalised, initially by a team of dedicated volunteers and eventually developed into a residential Christian community. Like Lee Abbey in Devon (where I have also stayed several times) many in the community are young people from many different countries, who volunteer for a year or two. It is a wonderful place to stay, to study, to rest and recharge, with rather a wonderful story behind it too.

The views from the corner of the estate, looking over Kettlewell village, are stunning. If it hadn't been so cold, I could have sat on that bench for hours!

Top and bottom

There's a glorious view from the top of Malham Cove, down to Malham village and way beyond. You can perhaps just see the distinctive whale-back of Pendle Hill on the horizon to the right. That's in Lancashire! The wiggly white line in the photo is the footpath that leads from the cove to the village, surfaced with limestone chippings to prevent erosion from the feet of the thousands of visitors who come to see this magnificent landscape.

There is a limestone pavement at the top of the cove, great blocks of limestone clints dissected by deep fissures known as grikes. There are some unusual plants that grow in the clefts. My young friend hopped nimbly over the treacherous rocky surface. Me... I went the long way round across the fields at the back! But I still had to brave the long, steep staircase cut into the rock down from the top to the base of the cove. It makes my thigh muscles tremble! Worth it though, for the view you get back up to the curved limestone cliff, 300m wide and 80m high, formed by glacial meltwater in the last Ice Age. It always reminds me of a theatre auditorium. These days the water seeps out from the base of the rock. On very, very rare occasions (like the floods of winter 2015), a waterfall does still cascade over the lip. See HERE for spectacular footage of that event.

Janet's Foss and Gordale Scar

I'm blessed with really good neighbours on both sides at the moment, a young couple on the one hand and a young man on the other. The generational divide isn't a problem and they are all friendly and extremely helpful. The young man is about to start a new job and was having a couple of weeks off so he asked me if I'd like to take a walk with him one day. He is from down south, has no car and doesn't know the Dales all that well, so it's rather enjoyable to introduce him to new places. We decided to go to Malham. It was mid-week so I knew it would only be busy and not as super-crowded as it tends to be at weekends and bank holidays. It was a reasonable day too, dry and warmish, if rather dull. We did the classic walk: up the gorge past the waterfall known as Janet's Foss, further up to have a look at Gordale Scar and then back and over to Malham Cove.

There was a fair bit of water coming over the falls, though I'm sure there is more now, as we've had a lot of recent rain. It's a charming spot in a wooded valley. You can quite believe the legend that the Queen of the Fairies lives in a cave behind the waterfall.

Beyond the falls it's another half mile or so walk up to Gordale Scar, a deep ravine that was probably formed by glacial meltwater or an underground cavern collapsing. It's hard to convey its scale in a photograph. The limestone cliffs are over 100m high and a stream comes crashing over the rocks in a series of waterfalls. The couple in the foreground of my photo were about to climb the cliffs. We watched the girl climb nimbly and fast, right up to the steepest overhang. I did take a picture of her up there but unfortunately she was wearing clothing that camouflaged her against the rock face, so you really can't see her. (All climbers should, by law, have to wear red!!)

The stream bed is notable for its deposits of tufa, an unusual rock formed by the water depositing calcium carbonate.

It is possible to climb up alongside the waterfalls and continue on up the gorge to Malham Tarn, the lake that lies above, though it is a steep and nerve-wracking scramble. (I have done it once - never again!) Instead, we retraced our steps down the ravine and then took the footpath that climbs steeply over the fields towards Malham Cove.

Parcevall's gardens in late summer

Come with me through the arched doorway and explore the beautiful gardens at Parcevall Hall.

There are a series of terraces at the front of the house, with a focal point of a round pond and a statue of a seated lady. Here too there are many seats and stone shelters, ideal places to settle down out of the wind and enjoy the wonderful views of the surrounding fells. 

Behind the house there are walled gardens, and a rock garden that extends up the hillside around a stream that cascades down into a pool. Below and to the side of the house is a large area of mixed woodland, containing a lake, and to the other side are orchards and a camellia walk. There's something of interest to see in most seasons, though when I went the herbaceous planting was a little past its best.

I wasn't sure what the tree above was. It had pretty cup-shaped white flowers. The guide book tells me it is an evergreen Eucryphia x nymansensis 'Nymansay' - but honestly I'm none the wiser! The garden has, I think, some unusual plants. I don't know the red one below, with maroon leaves, but it may be a Lobelia Cardinalis, which appears to be a N American plant.

Those below are easier: red nasturtiums, though I don't know the blue one.

The purple ones are a kind of autumn crocus.

The red-hot pokers looked good against the purple leaves (?) and on a south-facing wall I even spotted a grape vine, which is certainly not what I'd expect to find in this kind of upland area.

Lovely silver birch bark in the woodland, so metallic shiny that it might actually have been crafted from silver:

Parcevall Hall

Parcevall Hall lies just over the hill from Trollers Gill (see yesterday). It has an interesting history. It was originally a farmhouse, owned by nearby Bolton Priory. After the Dissolution of the Monasteries by Henry VIII in 1539, monastic assets were seized and the property passed into private ownership. During the 17th and 18th centuries it was owned by yeoman farmers, and one of them, Christopher Lowson, made some additions to the farmhouse. These and the oldest (pre-1600) parts of the house are in the photo above. Later in the 18th and 19th centuries, agriculture took a downturn and the house appears to have deteriorated until the 1920s, when it was bought by William Milner. He set about transforming Parcevall into a fine gentleman's residence and a comfortable home. He added a substantial wing, seen in the picture below, in the fashionable Arts and Crafts style.  

He also created a garden, remarkably, given that the surrounding land is largely treeless, high, limestone moorland. He planted trees all around the estate and created a series of substantial terraces, almost like extra rooms to the house. This blurs the boundary between house and garden, and then the severity of the stone is softened with planting. After his death the gardens deteriorated but have been nursed back to health over the last twenty years by a dedicated team of gardeners. The Hall is now used by the Anglican Diocese of Leeds as a retreat house. It's such a beautifully peaceful place to spend time.

The house and terraces face south and have wonderful views across to the hill known as Simon's Seat.

Braving the Barghest

The Barghest is a mythical, monstrous, black dog who, legend says, lives in Trollers Gill, a narrow limestone valley up in the Yorkshire Dales near Appletreewick. He can turn you to stone with one look! Some say he was the inspiration for Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's 'Hound of the Baskervilles'. The valley is also reputed to be inhabited by trolls who will throw stones to try to stop you travelling through. The myths have been enough to put me off exploring in the past but I decided that was very silly and, being up in the area, I took a short walk to see what lies there (even though I was on my own!)

Skyreholme Beck runs through the valley on its way to swell the River Wharfe further down. The beck bubbles along through the lower part of the valley but higher up there is a steep and narrow gorge with a stream-bed that is dry for most of the year. The water flows underground and gushes out from the bedrock at two or three points lower down, which was rather fascinating to see.

I didn't see a dog or any trolls during my explorations, but there were a few rock climbers in the gorge. Thankfully, they were roped up, as the guy in red fell at one point and swung freely. That was scarier to witness than the Barghest! Anyway, I survived and got safely home. (I don't know whether he did!)

Stainforth Force - and the thin blue line

The Hoffman Kiln (see yesterday) is near Stainforth, a village beside the River Ribble. Here the river tumbles over an impressive waterfall known as Stainforth Force. In the autumn you may be lucky enough to see salmon leaping upstream over the falls. On the day we visited, the water was coming down fast enough to deter any salmon. It's not called the Force for nothing. The only species you would have spotted was 'the greater tripod-wrangling club photographer' of which there were several in evidence!

There was so much water that slow-mo photos looked a little too confused, though that didn't stop me trying...

I was intrigued by 'the thin blue line'. Someone had strung a rope swing above the falls. One can only conclude that the water reverts to a mere trickle on some days. You'd have had to harbour a death wish to swing out on the day we were there!