The Missus' Dales' Diary - the Yorkshire Dales

This like many others of my travelogues, was an unsuccessful entry in the Daily Telegraphy Just Back travel writing competition.

THE MISSUS’ DALES DIARY

The skeletal shapes of the arches, pillars, and empty windows of Bolton Priory silhouetted against the gathering dusk provoke an involuntary shiver on a May evening.  This was a utopian settlement of simple agriculture and religion until it fell foul of Henry VIII in the 1530s.  It is our first memorable sight of the Yorkshire Dales.  ‘Let’s do our bit to support British tourism,’ I said to my wife in late March as she poured over brochures of blissfully sunny walking holidays in Spain.  ‘We could do the

Dales Way

.  It’s supposed to be the easiest long distance walking route in Britain.’  The honeymoon period, lasting two days in the sunshine, walking through grassy pastures of sheep by the tranquil peat brown river Wharfe, climbing stiles over the dry stone walls, is about to come to an end.  ‘It must look beautiful when it’s not raining’, I observe cheerfully to our silent driver as the taxi from Dent to Sedbergh splashes through Dentdale on a subsequent morning.  ‘Not really’ he responds morosely, ‘Just the same without the rain’.  This is definitely a glass half empty sort of fellow.   From Grassington northwards the Wharfe becomes a smaller, faster stream, rushing through tiny hamlets.  Clumps of white anemones nestle beneath the sparse trees.  Dippers and sandpipers flit between the rocks.  Wilder scenery brings wilder weather.  The rain, initially a fine misty drizzle, develops into horizontal sheets of penetrating water.  Up on boggy Yockenthwaite moor, this water is uncertain whether it’s forming the Wharfe or the Ribble.  We are uncertain too.  Raindrops falling from my hat stand an even chance of ending up in Lancashire or Yorkshire.  The majestic outline of the Ribblehead viaduct appears dimly through the cloud as we reach a road.  Soaked and bedraggled; sense of humour failure; bickering discussion.  Drawing on years of hitchhiking in the 60s I eventually insist that we must thumb a lift to Hawes.  My wife points out that no-one would consider taking us.  Amazingly however a car stops to pick us up.  ‘Nah, no worries mate’, says the Australian driver.  ‘It’s a hire car, gwine bick termorrer!’  Next day, struck by the proud way the French dub their tourist spots we name Dent ‘Un des plus beaux villages d’Angleterre.’  But it’s empty.  Daunted in Dent; bleak and muddy on Blea Moor; dribbling along the Ribble; lunatics on the Lune; we gradually make our way towards Lakeland, the end of the route.  The foothills of the lakes are formed by seemingly endless ridges.  We are moving forward, but not into broad, sunlit uplands.  Finally the Langdales and the Old Man of Coniston loom blackly in the distance above the turbulent surface of Lake Windermere.  We march down into Bowness, past the plaque announcing the end of the 83 mile trek.  The

Dales Way

guidebook says: ‘Few there by the lakeside will know what you have achieved.’  Short of shouting it to the swans who are oblivious to the rain there is nobody to tell anyway.

Word Count:  500