A run to the Dales

Settle, Yorkshire Dales.

It didn’t seem possible the forecast could be right for morning. A clear day ahead, it said. Light cloud. Sunshine. But the wind was howling, there were flurries of snow, and heavy rain. I took the little blue car out the evening before to fill her up anyway. Well, I put enough in for the trip. At £1.48 per litre, my local garage is one of the cheapest, but that’s still a record high for me. I reckoned it would break £1.50 by morning.

It did.

But the weather had also changed. The wind had dropped, and it was looking like a dry day, as the forecast promised, so here we are, driving north, to Settle. But the heart is heavy, and the usual thrill at heading for the Dales is lacking. The news from Eastern Europe, this morning, is deeply unsettling.

Traffic is heavy, morning commute time. It takes half an hour to travel five miles, then an hour to cover the remaining forty. In the meadows north of Long Preston, the Ribble has flooded out, and several trees are down. The region has suffered a battering of storms, like everywhere else, these past weeks. But there are snowdrops by the wayside, radiant in the sun, offering glimmers of hope. Ingleborough, is white capped, and gleaming in the distance, a beacon drawing us in.

Settle is bustling, mid-morning. I’ve always like this town. In common with other places in the Dales, it refuses the overt touristification so many other places in national parks, like the Lakes for example, succumb to. As a consequence, it retains its authenticity, its soul. People still live here. I could live here. It is a town contained to the east by high fells, bordered by the Ribble to the west. My home village has few choices for walking, and all are dull. Here the choice is endless and grand.

It’s a good day for a walk, good light for the camera. We pick up the Ribble, and head upstream to Stackhouse, and the weir. The river is lively, and thundering. There’s a backdrop of finely textured cloud lit by a bright, low sun. Penyghent is peeping at us, snow still lying in the gullies on its western flank. The grasses are impossibly green, glowing with a promise that seems somehow inappropriate.

Then it’s Langcliffe, and the path through Dicks Ground Plantation, up the hill to Higher Winskill. The light intensifies, the clouds are moving, and the dale begins to breathe. Back in the summer, I sat here for ages, just watching the light change over Dick’s Ground, with its crazy patchwork of meadows. I try to tease back more of that memory, thinking to regain my centre by it, but it’s elusive. Finches duck about in the thorn tree at our backs. They’re telling us spring is coming. I hope they’re right. But spring will be late in the Ukraine this year, if it comes at all.

Sampson’s Toe, Langcliffe

We skip Catrigg force. I never could get a decent picture of it anyway. Instead, we head up the track towards Langcliffe scar. We’re looking for the Norber Erratics, and find a good one, a huge gritstone boulder atop the limestone. They call this one Samson’s Toe. Perched here for twelve thousand years or so, it’s seen a lot of history, most of it before we ever learned to read and write. It came from the Lake District, carried by ice. There were people around in those days, of course, but it’s anyone’s guess what they were up to, since they predate even our earliest myths. It’s likely they were making war, as we still are. Was there ever a time when we were not dangerous to one another? I presume not, but we were never so dangerous as we are now, so many ways of raining down fire on innocent heads.

We pick up the line of the craggy Attermire Scars, follow them south, towards the more gently rounded Sugar Loaf Hill. The way is of a sudden boggy here, a ring of gaspingly beautiful high dales draining into a broad, squelchy hollow, churned to a deep slime by heavy beasts. We find a dry nest of rock, and hunker down for lunch. Sugar Loaf is to our backs, the line of the Warrendale Knotts, stem to stern, for our view, and the light playing tunes along the length of it.

Warrendale Knotts

Back home, I’ve got more fence panels hanging by a thread. It’s been getting me down, this tail end of winter, but today I don’t care. Today I’m lucky my world is so safe I can be derailed by such trivia. The car ran well, made me feel good, actually, the snarl of it. Plus, of course, it’s a beautiful day, a beautiful view, and my boots haven’t leaked, yet. Still, there’s this shadow hanging over things. We think it’s one thing or another, but the shadow isn’t always a material thing. It comes out of the psyche, sometimes too out of the deeper layers, through which we’re all connected, in which case there’s a lot of people feeling the same unease as me, right now.

We pick up the ancient ways from here, beginning with the Lambert Lane track, and we come back to Settle, approaching from the south. The tracks run deep between dry-stone walls, and are flooded out in places, seemingly impassable. Walkers have taken rocks from the tops of the walls and laid them as stepping stones. These too are submerged now. The boots will surely leak at this challenge, but we arrive back at the car with dry feet, and no complaints.

Seven or eight miles round, still early in the afternoon, we top the day off with coffee, and a toasted bun, at the Naked Man café. Face masks have mostly gone now. Covid scared us all witless, two years ago. Suddenly, no one cares about it, any more.

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On the Warrendale Knotts

The Warrendale Knotts

It’s looking like the last really warm day of the year, late September, with an added Friday feeling. We’ve left the M6 at the Tickled Trout, dropped the top in a lay-by on the A59 and now we’re motoring towards the Dales. The route is quiet for once, and fast – few heavies – and we’re able to enjoy the rush of air without the added taste of diesel. We’re making for the pretty little village of Langcliffe, a terrific spot for a walk in limestone country, a six mile round of scars and caves and waterfalls.

We park under the shade of a tree by the church, then boot up and commence the steep pull beyond the gate, up a lush meadow still slick with dew. Then it’s a green way across pasture and fell-side, towards Settle, then steep again on the more assertive pull towards the Warrendale Knotts. Things are looking good with clear skies and a warm sun just clearing the crags now, lifting the dew. We can see for ever beyond the valley of the Ribble, just a faint haze out on the horizon and there’s a crisp stillness to it all, trees paused in motion as if looking at each other in anticipation of autumn’s turn and saying: is this it yet?

The Warrendale Knotts occupy an area of craggy access land, just off the main walking routes. The initial approach is intimidating, a wall of seemingly impregnable limestone buttresses. But as we get to grips the cracks reveal themselves, and the way wends more obligingly towards the top and a Trig point, nestling in the ruins of a wind-shelter. Meanwhile a neat little cairn marks the summit, just a little higher on a limestone pavement fifty yards to the north. It’s a very fine spot indeed, somewhere to settle for lunch and soak up the glorious day.

Trig point, Warrendale Knotts

We have the Knotts to ourselves, the long line of them beautiful, even at noon when the light tends to be flat and uninteresting. But this late-season sun is low enough to pick out the craggy details and paint the land with a heavenly luminosity. We have the green and copper of the pastures below rising to lap at the toes of gnarled and deeply fissured crags. The crags are like old silver, burnished here and there to reflect the light. Perhaps I go too far with the prose. I can’t help it; days like these have you in poetic raptures, scrambling for similes and metaphors, and send your spirit soaring like a twittering lark.

Yes, such days are among the most treasured, though I’m aware I present something of a cliche myself, this late middle-ager puttering about the Dales in an old open topped car, still scoring routes up all the hills. The word menopausal comes to mind, but I refute the charge your honour. I’m not looking to rediscover a youth that passed too quickly. For one thing the body is sufficient reminder of my years, and the legs hesitant with caution where I once stepped with impunity, all speak of a certain chastening though experience. No, this is more a continuing appraisal of the journey ahead, and a determination not to look back, for looking back is what truly stiffens a man up, makes him old before his time.

Warrendale Knotts, view towards the Attermire Scars

The car was made in Hiroshima in 2002, then shipped half way across the world to England, spent its own youth with someone else and is living now in semi-retirement exploring the Yorkshire Dales with me. She’s done over ninety thousand, twenty of them mine and still drives well. Sure, perhaps we’re both old enough to know better, but we don’t care. I’ve a feeling she’ll be considered a classic in years to come, and worth hanging on to. But it’s looking likely now a future climate levy will tax her off the road, as she’s a little heavy on the carbon.

You find me in a reflective mood today. The world down there is in free-fall, almost as if things have been engineered that way, but all of that dissolves to nothing when the fells are warm, the weather is kind, and we gain the transcendent perspective of a time-worn cairn. I’ve recently come to a decision about retirement. I’ll be going early, in a little over a year’s time. There’ll be a significant hit on the pension, but I’ll manage. I’ve been working since September 1977 and it’s enough; 2020 will be my last year. Time now to settle back into being what, through modesty and lack of material success, I’ve always hesitated to call myself: a writer.

It’s not without some hesitation, the thought of retiring into such uncertain times, of quitting the cushion of well paid work when well paid work for ordinary folk is a thing of the past. The writing’s never made a bean and never will, but one clearly cannot go on for ever with the long commutes and the working days so greedy of one’s private time. And of course, while the world of work screams blue murder at itself, the fells dream on and I’m for dreaming more often in their company, at least while I’ve still the legs to carry me,…

Warrendale Knotts – summit cairn, view to Penyghent

So,.. from the Warrendale Knotts we pick our way northwards, then east a little until the path firms up and leads us down to the more well-worn route by the Attermire Scars.  In the far distance Penyghent crouches, Sphinx-like, basking in the sun, its paws resting on a network of dry-stone walls that thread all the knotty pastures into one. We try a photograph or two. The camera captures Penyghent nicely, the light too, but as with all cameras, it never truly sees the land the way you feel it.

The Attermire Scars are famous for their caves. The largest, the Victoria Cave, is a huge, dank and foul-breathed orifice, oozing slime-water and it swallows up the sun as we approach. We manage a few yards inside before barriers of rusting iron prevent a more intimate exploration, not that I’m tempted anyway and find all caves uninviting.

But speaking of intimate, lying among the greased rocks on the cave floor I discover a pair of – well, shall we say – ladies foundation wear? It’s quite a dainty pair too, and somewhat incongruous in a lush wine-red, set against the cold and the wet and the grey. I hesitate to imagine what the lady was doing to lose them, for this is hardly an inviting place for romantic assignations, though each to their own I suppose and I’m not so old I’ve forgotten the youthful urgency that demands we take advantage of whatever opportunity arises. Sadly, it’s less so as we age of course, when lace and daintiness is gradually exchanged for something altogether plainer, less alluring of course, but far more practical.

Anyway,… we potter on, clear the cave, emerge once more into the blessed sun and a sweeter air. Then I lose my footing on a dollop of sheep poo. It’s been laid with fiendish cunning upon a patch of dew, lurking in the shadow of the stile through which I’m passing. It’s an impressively slippery combination; one second I’m admiring the view – while admittedly still recalling past encounters with the allure of ladies foundation-wear – and the next I’m on my arse. Fortunately for my dignity, there were only sheep for witnesses. Most pretend not to notice, though I’m sure one of them is laughing, chalking up another downed pedestrian.

Upper Whinskill, Langcliffe

The day is Indian-Summer-hot now, the sweat dripping from the peak of my cap, which I hang from the sack to dry out. We have a bit of road-walking, though it’s the sort of narrow, unfenced fell-road on which one rarely sees a car. Then a long green lane brings us to the hamlet of Upper Whinskill. Here we take the track to the splendid, Catrigg Force where Stainforth beck drops through a nick in high crags, before making its thunderous escape down to the Ribble.

As I take up position here for the obligatory photograph, I’m conscious I’ve been off my feet once already, so I dither a bit on the rocks. It’s my boots, I’m thinking – I mean this creeping lack of sure-footedness. They don’t make boots like they used to do, slithering and sliding about as if the soles are oozing something oily. I wonder if I can improve them by applying a thin layer of roof-repair mastic. That’ll make them sticky for sure, though how durable I don’t know. Worth a try, I suppose.

Anyway, I grab the shot and we close the loop of the walk, making the final mile by Stainforth Scar, sparkling in the sun now, and then we’re down among lush meadows and green lanes and butterflies, back to Langcliffe. The car is waiting in the shade of a tree, sunlight dappled across the paint. I open the top to let the heat out, clean myself up with the remains of my water-bottle, change my shirt, contemplate the time.

It’s a tranquil spot, a place to linger; we’ll only be hitting tea-time traffic at Preston if we paste it back right away and that will surely spoil the day. Besides, look, there’s a book sale on at the church, and I could never resist a rummage among musty books. So, here’s what we’ll do. We’ll loiter a bit, then have a bite to eat in Settle, find a nice pub, travel back this evening. It’ll be a gorgeous drive as the light turns to amber and with the whole of a deepening sky peeled back above us.

Sound good to you?

Stainforth Scar and the green lane from Langliffe

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