As we drive away up Wensleydale we look back again and again at the fortress, which dominates the valley far more conspicuously than its position on the green hillside seems to warrant. The scenery grows wilder and the slopes nearer before a steep descent with a bad surface takes us into Askrigg. Here, in a little open space beside the church, is a picturesque Jacobean house of grey stone, bearing an inscription and the date mdclxxviii. Its projecting bays are joined by a wooden gallery, which was designed, it is said, to give a good view of the bull-baiting that took place before it. There, hidden in the grass, is the iron ring to which the bull was tied; and close beside it stands the restored village-cross—a strange conjunction of symbols! In the fifteenth-century church there are some pillars which are thought to have been transported from Fors, the original dwelling, about a mile from here, of the brothers of Jervaulx—the little band of monks from Savigny, who came to this valley under the leadership of Peter de Quincy, the Leech, in the reign of Stephen. They found this place too wild even for their Cistercian ideals, too cold and foggy for the ripening of crops, too frequently beset by wolves; and so, though the optimistic Peter was "very certain we shall be able to raise a competent supply of ale, cheese, bread, and butter," the community moved nearer to civilisation, leaving behind them nothing for us to see except a window in a barn and these pillars in Askrigg Church.
ASKRIGG.
As the road becomes narrower and rougher the scenery every moment grows more beautiful. Hawes lies on the other side of the valley at the foot of the blue hills, in a lovely position beside the Ure; and when we have reached a point exactly opposite to it we turn sharply up a steep pitch on the right, with a splendid panoramic view of mountains on the left as we climb.
This is the beginning of the Buttertubs Pass. From this point onwards, till the road plunges down into Swaledale, the surface is composed more or less of loose stones. The stiffest upward gradients we shall have to encounter are within a mile or two of this spot, for the wild part of the pass—the real moorland—is comparatively level, and by the time we reach the actual Buttertubs we are already running down. This is the climax—this point where the downward gradient begins—for here suddenly the solid earth seems to fall away from us: here suddenly the rough and narrow road is no longer lying across the far-stretching moorland, but is hanging high upon the hillside, clinging upon the extremest edge of a gulf which drops dizzily into a blue sea of shadows. Thus it clings for miles. Beyond the chasm the bare hillside rises again above our heads in magnificent curves, glowing with colour, and cleft here and there into purple gorges. Slightly above the road on the left are the Buttertubs, strange crater-like hollows of unplumbed depth, appearing at intervals beside us, with sharp rocks bristling through the grass at their mouths. As we slowly descend, the hills of Swaledale rise before us like a wall blocking the defile; and presently a gate across the road shows that we are near the world again.
THE BUTTERTUBS PASS.
Truly this is one of the runs that are unforgettable. To be among these savage heights and depths, these heaving waves of desolate moor, to have these solitudes above us and these blue shadows so far below us, is to know something of "the strong foundations of the earth." It is with a feeling of anti-climax that we close the gate behind us, and, on a precipitous gradient and no surface worth mentioning, steer slowly down into Swaledale.