Category: Yorkshire Dales
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Elgar Was Here
Big numbers do heavy lifting. You have millions of experiences in a lifetime. You think thousands of thoughts a day. The odds of something lining up occasionally are not slim — they are enormous. The surprise is not that coincidences happen. It is that we are surprised. Or perhaps it is just Jung’s “synchronicity.” I…
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Warrendale Knotts and Attermire Scar
The scarps east of Settle rival any picture of the Dolomites. Vast columns of rock stand gaunt against the skyline, and in its shaded valleys, hill sheep regard the intruder with resentment and suspicion. The geology is almost absurb. Warrendale Knotts is a dramatic cliff of shattered limestone crags along the Mid Craven Fault —…
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Pen-y-Ghent: Where Giants Trod
What a splendid view to stumble upon. Pen-y-Ghent, that stubborn Yorkshire monolith, standing proud above the limestone pavements of Winskill Stones, looking as though it has absolutely no intention of going anywhere. A mountain with a name like that ought to come with legends attached, and Pen-y-Ghent does not disappoint. Stories of giants are ten…
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Langcliffe Quarry and its Hoffman Kiln
Langcliffe Quarry was once a place of serious industry, producing lime from the late 1800s to the early 1900s. The remains of three types of kiln still stand here: the Triple Draw, the Hoffmann, and the Spencer. Together, they tell the story of how lime production lurched from the pre-industrial age into the modern world,…
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Burnsall Moor Chimney: Too Small to Be Famous, Too Stubborn to Disappear
High on the moor south of Burnsall, a chimney stands alone among the remains of what was probably a boiler house. Nobody seems entirely sure what it is. At least I have found no creditable source. Opinion is that it belonged to one of the many small collieries that scratched away on these Yorkshire moors…
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Providence Smelting Mill – Lead, Sweat and and 200 Years of Silence
The arch in this image above has stood on this windswept Yorkshire moor for over two hundred years. It is now the most eye-catching feature in this otherwise barren valley. Near Greenhow, west of Pateley Bridge in Nidderdale, the ground holds centuries of industrial history just beneath the surface. In 1840, Michael Colling, agent to…
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The Prosperous Smelt Mill
These crumbling stone walls tell quite a story. Standing at the foot of a bracken-covered hillside near Pateley Bridge, the ruins of the Prosperous smelt mill look like something from a forgotten world. They are, rather fittingly, exactly that. Lead was probably first mined here by the Romans. The first written record dates from 1781.…
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Boxer Peacock’s Cottage, Arkengarthdale
Another post from last Thursday’s jaunt from Arkengarthdale, when I walked straight past one of the curiosities in the dale. On the track up from Fremington, I spotted what looked like a broken bit of Victorian drainpipe stuck in the bank, overflowing with water. I gave it barely a glance and walked on. Fool. Back…
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Wall’s End, Calver Hill
Yesterday’s walk in Swaledale served up the full British weather menu — mist, mystery and a fleeting glimpse of actual sunshine. Climbing out of Reeth up Arkengarthdale, we broke above the clouds into glorious blue skies. Descending Calver Hill, the mist swallowed us whole again. As it does. Then this wall appeared from nowhere. A…
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Fremington Edge Chert: The Stone That Made Your Teacup
A view from Reeth Low Moor looking across at the scars gouged onto Fremington Edge. Those wounds in this hillside are not the work of nature. They are what happens when industry decides it needs something badly enough. Chert quarrying in Swaledale ran from around 1900 to approximately 1950, driven almost entirely by the pottery…