From Malham the way is narrow and surprisingly tortuous as far as Hellifield, but here we rejoin the splendid high road we left at Coniston, and speed along it through Ribblesdale to Settle. This small town has progressive ambitions. It "treats" the surface of its main road, it lights its streets by electricity, it has a fine new garage and a hotel that has the air of being nice. It is attractive, too, and pretty as well as praiseworthy, with hills behind it and a tiny weir above the bridge. Beyond it we pass the ebbing and flowing spring of Giggleswick in its stone basin by the wayside; climb the long hill under the grey crags of Giggleswick Scar, with a splendid backward view, and run down by wood and beck to Clapham, where the village cross stands close to the stream in the shadow of the trees. Not very far away is the famous cave, bristling with stalactites. After leaving Clapham we cross a wide heath, with the throttle open.
First and last this is a good run. On the left is the open country; on the right that wild land of huge stones and steep rocks that seemed to Camden so unsightly, in an age when the whole duty of a landscape was to smile. Clambering on the hillside in a cleft of the crags are the narrow, winding streets of Ingleton, and a viaduct spanning the valley. This valley, which is hardly wider than a gorge, is said to be well worth exploring; but neither its waterfall, Thornton Force, nor its caves of Yordas and Weathercote, can be seen by road. They hardly concern us here. It concerns us rather to return to Skipton, and thence to strike up into the heart of the hills.
Climbing the road above the castle we see how Skipton lies in a hollow among the moors. Behind us to the south is the Brontë country; Haworth and its graves far off beyond Airedale, and Stonegappe only three miles away. It was at Stonegappe that Charlotte reluctantly taught the little Sidgwicks, and no doubt made them suffer nearly as much as she suffered herself from her over-sensitive feelings. Embsay Moor appears on our right as we rise, and beyond it the savage outline of Rylstone Fell, with the ruined watch-tower of the Nortons, the foes of the Cliffords, showing desolately against the sky upon the topmost crag. Of the Nortons and their tower, and the daughter of their house, and of the White Doe of Rylstone and her weekly journey across the moors to the grave of the youth with whom the Nortons ended, Wordsworth has told us. We are running down now into "the valley small," where the house of the Nortons once stood, and here is the Church where
"the bells of Rylstone played
Their Sabbath music—God us ayde!"
At Threshfield we turn to the left and are in Wharfedale.
The names of all these Yorkshire Dales are very familiar in our ears. Wharfedale, Wensleydale, Swaledale, Teesdale—they are all words with a charm in them. And here, as we glide out of a wood, is Wharfedale spread before us; and we know at last that it is not only in the name that the charm lies.
The river flows below through the wide valley and winds away in shining curves into the far distance, past the bluff outline of Kilnsey Crag, past the dark belt of firs, till it vanishes among the folds of the jewelled hills. For in their liquid brilliancy the colouring of all these dales is that of gems, of amethyst and emerald, of sapphire and turquoise and opal; and the sunlight that floods them on the days when we are fortunate has the luminous gold of the topaz. As we drive under the overhanging crag of Kilnsey—"the highest and steepest that ever I saw," says Camden—and pass the tiny village where the sheep belonging to the Abbey of Fountains used to be shorn, the hills begin to close in, till, as we draw near Kettlewell, they rise round us so protectively that we seem to have entered a new and calmer world. Kettlewell itself is so calm as to appear asleep. Its grey houses, shadowed by trees and sheltered by the mighty shoulder of Great Whernside, are defended from every wind, and from every sound but the rippling of the Wharfe. Beyond this peaceful spot, where we cross the river, the road is rather rough, and after passing through pretty Buckden it is also extremely narrow. However, it leads to Hubberholme, and no more than that need be asked of any road.
At Hubberholme the river is still wide, and thickly strewn with stones; the slopes of the hills are very near and steep, and are clothed with bracken and fir-trees, and deeply cleft by tiny becks; masses of wild flowers fringe the banks with clouds of mystic blue; and beyond an old stone bridge stands the church, low and grey, with a paved pathway and a porch bright with crimson ramblers. The rough walls have stood in this lonely spot for many centuries. The door is open, and we may see for ourselves the strange state of the masonry within, whose builders, when they left it thus rugged and unplastered, little thought that its unfinished appearance would be tenderly cherished by the antiquarians of a future age. A rare rood-loft of oak divides the tiny chancel from the nave. This loft dates from the year 1558, the last year that the Old Faith reigned in England; and in this remote hiding-place among the hills it escaped the vigilant eye of Elizabeth and the destructive hands of the Puritans.
On returning to Kettlewell we shall find it worth our while to continue the journey down the dale on the road that passes through Conistone, for though it is not so good, as regards surface, as that on the right bank of the river, it commands a different—and a very lovely—series of views. From Grassington we cross to Linton, on the right bank, where there are some little falls whose prettiness is hardly striking enough to allure us from our way; and at Burnsall we should keep to the same side of the stream rather than follow the public conveyances to the left bank. Horse-drawn travellers may well be excused for shirking the hill above Burnsall; but few gradients have any terrors for us, and the backward view of Wharfedale from the high hillside is more beautiful than anything we have yet seen in Yorkshire. The two roads meet near Barden Tower, the beloved retreat of the Shepherd Lord.