More desolate than any of the heights I had yet passed over. A broad table-land of turf bogs, coffee-coloured pools, stacks of turf, patches of rushes, and great boulders peeping everywhere out from among the hardy heather. The dark cloud still hung aloft, and the wind blew chill, making me quicken my pace, and feel the more pleasure when, after about half an hour, the view opened into Wensleydale. A valley appears on the right, with colts and cattle grazing on the bright green slopes; the road descends; stone abounds; fences, large gate-posts, all are made of stone; the road gets rougher; and by-and-by we come to Shaw, a little village under Stag Fell, by the side of a wooded glen, from which there rises the music of a mountain brook. On the left you see Lord Wharncliffe’s lodge, to which he resorts with his friends on the 12th of August, for the hills around are inhabited by grouse. Yonder the walls and windows of Hawes reflect the setting sun, and we see more of Wensleydale, where trees are numerous in the landscape.
Then another little village, Simonstone, where, passing through the public-house by the bridge, we find a path that leads us into a rocky chasm, about ninety feet deep and twice as much in width, the limestone cliffs hung with trees and bushes, here and there a bare crag jutting out, or lying shattered beneath; while, cutting the grassy floor in two, a lively beck ripples its way along. A bend conceals its source; but we saunter on, and there at the end of the ravine, where the cliffs advance and meet, we see the beck making one leap from top to bottom—and that is Hardraw Scar. The rock overhangs above, hence the water shoots clear of the cliff, and preserves an irregular columnar form, widening at the base with bubbles and spray. You can go behind it, and look through the falling current against the light, and note how it becomes fuller and fuller of lines of beads as it descends, until they all commingle in the flurry below. Dr. Tyndall might make an observatory of this cool nook, the next time he investigates the cause of the noise in falling water, with the advantage of looking forth on the romantic and pleasing scene beyond. The geologist finds in the ravine a suggestive illustration on a small scale of what Niagara with thunderous plunge has been accomplishing through countless ages—namely, wearing away the solid rock, inch by inch, foot by foot, until in the one instance a river chasm is formed miles in length, and here, in the other, a pretty glen a little more than a furlong deep.
At the time I saw it, the quantity of water was probably not more than would fill a twelve-inch tube; but after heavy rains the upper stream forms a broad horseshoe fall as it rushes over the curving cliff. In the severe frost of 1740, when the Londoners were holding a fair on the Thames, Hardraw Scar was frozen, and, fed continually from the source above, it became at last a cone of ice, ninety feet in height, and as much in circumference at the base: a phenomenon that was long remembered by the gossips of the neighbourhood.
Hawes cheats the eye, and seems near, when by the road it is far off. On the way thither from Simonstone we cross the Ure, the river of Wensleydale, a broad and shallow, yet lively stream, infusing a charm into the landscape, which I saw at the right moment, when the evening shadows were creeping from the meadows up the hill-sides, and the water flashed with gold and crimson ripples. I lingered on the bridge till the last gleam vanished.
So grim and savage are the fells at the head of Wensleydale, that the country folk in times past regarded them with superstitious dread, and called the little brooks which there foster the infancy of Ure, ‘hell-becks’—a name of dread. But both river and dale change their character as they descend, the one flowing through scenes of exquisite beauty ere, united with the Swale, it forms the Ouse; and the dale broadens into the richest and most beautiful of all the North Riding.
CHAPTER XX.
Bainbridge—“If you had wanted a wife”—A Ramble—Millgill Force—Whitfell Force—A Lovely Dell—The Roman Camp—The Forest Horn, and the old Hornblower—Haymaking—A Cockney Raker—Wensleydale Scythemen—A Friend indeed—Addleborough—Curlews and Grouse—The First Teapot—Nasty Greens—The Prospect—Askrigg—Bolton Castle—Penhill—Middleham—Miles Coverdale’s Birthplace—Jervaux Abbey—Moses’s Principia—Nappa Hall—The Metcalfes—The Knight and the King—The Springs—Spoliation of the Druids—The great Cromlech—Legend—An ancient Village—Simmer Water—An advice for Anglers—More Legends—Counterside—Money-Grubbers—Widdale—Newby Head.
Four miles from Hawes down the dale is the pleasant village of Bainbridge, where the rustic houses, with flower-plots in front and roses climbing on the walls, and yellow stonecrop patching the roofs and fences, look out upon a few noble sycamores, and a green—a real village green. The hills on each side are lofty and picturesque; at one end, on a flat eminence, remains the site of a Roman camp; the Bain, a small stream coming from a lake some three miles distant, runs through the place in a bed of solid stone, to enter Ure a little below, and all around encroaching here and there up the hill-sides spread meadows of luxuriant grass. The simple rural beauty will gladden your eye, and—as with every stranger who comes to Bainbridge—win your admiration.