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Our next destination was Stablefell campsite in the hamlet of Marsett, bang in the centre of England’s Yorkshire Dales National Park at the end of a no-through-road winding its way into the hills.
Our Otley friends had given us a colourful, aromatic bunch of sweet peas and other flowers from their allotment as we left town. So we camped in style at Marsett with the flowers set in an empty coleslaw pot atop our 30-year-old campstove on our small, 50-year-old camping table (leaving us to eat off our 126-year-old knees – combined age per pair of knees).
The flowers really brightened up a couple of days of strong winds and heavy rain during an otherwise mild, occasionally drizzly week and some of them even lasted until our departure and travelled on with us again, moistened in wet newspaper.
[Use arrows or swipe to scroll photos] View from our tent at Stablefell campsite. On our first tent-bound day of bad weather, Dave felt it was a good time to start on the next 800-page Harry Potter. The campsite was perfectly situated and had all the necessary facilities ... although I’m not sure about the double toilet cubicle!
The campsite’s new owners at Marsett were spot-on with their COVID precautions: well-spaced pitches, frequent cleaning of the toilet block and plenty of hand sanitiser stations at the doors and gates (although one totally unnecessary gate in constant use should instead have been chained open or removed – we were amongst the very few who bothered to sanitise every time we passed through).
Marsett was a remote, quiet and picturesque area in the hills, with wonderful walking country right from the door of the tent. The campsite owners had helpfully pinned up a few local walking routes outside the toilet block. I persuaded Poppy, our youngest, to join me on a short, early evening leg-stretch before tea (just the two of us – Dave was cooking and May couldn’t be persuaded to walk).
Unfortunately, in addition to my attempts to get us lost, the walking routes turned out to have erroneous distances marked on. The distances shown in km were actually in miles, thus almost twice as far! Arriving back hungry and exhausted after an increasingly hasty yomp of more than 4 miles instead of the 4 km (< 2.5 miles) we’d anticipated, Poppy firmly announced her intention never ... ever ... to walk with me again.
After two wet, windy days, hunkered down at the campsite, I hoped Poppy had forgotten our last walk. We therefore planned a family hike from Marsett up the adjacent valley, following Bardale Beck’s clear waters upstream to Bardale Head (close to the River Wharfe’s source), then descending a different way.
[Use arrows or swipe to scroll photos] Bardale, Bardale Beck and valley view towards and beyond Semerwater.
The beautiful path was deserted, with views back down the valley to Semerwater, one of just two natural lakes in the Yorkshire Dales (the other being the stunning, popular Malham Tarn).
At first, the hike proceeded well. For this short walk (5-6 miles), we’d unusually left our waterproofs behind to economise on weight. After a two-day drenching, the weather MUST have rained itself out. The peaks looked fair.
In my defence, I understand a bit about changeable mountain weather (originally trained in meteorology) and we weren’t exposing ourselves (or potential rescuers) to real danger. We had, and knew how to use, emergency weatherproof blankets, warm extra layers, water, food, compass, map, phone, first aid kit, had checked the forecast, were well within our capabilities. The risk was merely discomfort if murky drizzle rolled in.
Which, of course, it did. Dave and I, even May after an initial explosion of disbelief about the waterproofs, put a brave face on things. Already damp with sweat, this was just a bit damper, a bit colder. But Poppy surpassed her previous world record for loud, sustained chuntering.
At our furthest point, on the desolate tops, the route flattened, the drizzle eased. In a vast emptiness, the climb finished, having seen no-one for two hours ... it was a good time to pee.
I squatted. Suddenly, a tiny, hidden road became apparent 30 metres away and every vehicle in the vicinity chose that moment to appear from nowhere and drive past in convoy. I’ve rarely yanked my trousers up so quickly. (Well, just once, but this time I remembered to stop peeing first.)
We began to descend, immediately getting lost in ankle-deep peat bog. By the time we reached the banks of Bardale Beck, the day was innocuously fair once more. The girls chose to clean their muddy shoes by walking them straight into the beck – I suppose that’s one way to do it.
ASIDE: Bardale Beck was such a special place that we decided to give it a final chance on our last day. We took a short walk up the same valley in hot sun to a pretty picnic spot on the banks of the beck. It was a relaxing and lovely end to our time in the Yorkshire Dales.
Indeed, the girls’ paddle was marred only when Poppy slipped on the smooth, wet rocks of the shallow riverbed and slithered in, fully clothed but unhurt, up to her waist – followed soon after by the only passerby allowing one of her many dogs to crap at the edge of the water a few metres from our picnic and not clearing up after it. Heyho, there’s always someone available to spoil things.
[Use arrows or swipe to scroll photos] Bardale and Bardale Beck in sunshine.
Strangely, no-one wanted to walk with me after the previous two hikes. But I had to get out and walk again in the Yorkshire Dales. So, one afternoon, we drove as a family into the small, nearby village of Bainbridge to buy barbeque provisions. Unfortunately, the tiny, part-time store was on reduced hours owing to COVID and had already closed for the day. There was a small butcher’s shop which sold sausages and frozen burgers, so we would have to make do with those for our barbeque, supplemented with a few leftover slices of bread and no toasted marshmallows. Not quite the feast we had envisaged, but it would have to do.
I was dropped off in Bainbridge to trek the 5 miles back up the valley to the campsite by myself, whilst Dave drove himself and the girls back. Initially, there was some doubt as to whether he would manage the drive as his eyes were watering so much from a late onset of hay fever. Thankfully, his eyes settled down, and we set off along our respective ways.
I had a lovely walk. I passed the Archimedes screw set into the river at Bainbridge, which generates hydro-electric power for most of the properties in the village. Then I trekked over some low tops dissected with dry stone walls and scattered with a few hardy sheep, and through a field of cows with attendant bull, where I kept well to the edge and maintained my fall-back option of plunging into the river and away to the next field if needed.
I passed Semerwater and the ‘Turner Trail Seat’, where the famous artist J. M. W. Turner stopped in 1816 to sketch a sparkling ‘Simmer Water’ (Semerwater) – today, gently teeming with paddleboarders at its downstream end. Finally, I reached the isolated back route into Marsett that I’d previously walked with Poppy on our first evening, passing an old, ruined church and tiny graveyard, before returning to the banks of the glittering Bardale Beck that took me into Marsett.
[Use arrows or swipe to scroll photos] Bainbridge to Marsett, Yorkshire Dales National Park.
For most of the walk, apart from Semerwater, I found myself completely alone. But there was a brief, unexpected spell in the middle where I passed no less than 17 walkers coming towards me in three groups – including a very friendly, distinctively dressed, large family group from an unknown religious sect that reminded me strongly of the lovely Mennonites we’d chatted with in Newfoundland last summer.
Our campsite was only a few miles from the popular tourist spot of Aysgarth Falls, so we wanted to make a visit, but chose to do so late one day when most others had left. After a couple of days of heavy rain, the Upper and Middle Falls were spectacularly brown and surging. Years ago, on a day of much less turbulent water, Dave and I had seen casual kayakers exploring these falls – it was hard to believe we were in the same place.
We were also in the general vicinity of Ribblehead Viaduct. Close to Whernside (the highest point in Yorkshire and tallest of the Yorkshire Dales’ famous three peaks, Ingleborough, Pen-y-ghent and Whernside), this viaduct is one of the most impressive structures on the charming Settle-to-Carlisle railway line.
The viaduct, comprising 24 huge stone arches looming 32 metres (104 feet) above Blea Moor, was built during the period 1869-74, as part of the last main railway line in Britain to be constructed primarily using manual labour. Nearly 2300 ‘navvies’ worked on building the viaduct, living in shanty towns near the base. Over 100 men lost their lives during construction, through a mix of accidents, fights and smallpox outbreaks – so many deaths, in fact, that the railway company ended up paying for an expansion to the local graveyard.
Once again, we decided to schedule our visit to a popular spot at an uncrowded time: a chilly, murky day immediately after rain. If anything, it made our visit even more atmospheric. And, when we left and took a scenic route back to the campsite along a tiny, secluded, gated road from Ingleton towards Dent, we might have been the only people remaining in the whole world.
Stablefell campsite in Marsett was full for the weekend, so we left just as the best weather (and crowds) arrived. Ready to go, we spotted a huge pile of decent camping equipment that other guests had left stacked up for disposal behind the rubbish bins.
I know we’re extreme at keeping things running and minimising our resource usage. Most of our camping stuff is serviceable but very dated. At home, we are still eking out the budget and secondhand sofas we bought over 20 years ago. A friend recently commented that, years ago, they’d get every last morsel of meat off a roast chicken, then boil up the bones for stock. They looked perturbed when I said I had done the same thing just a fortnight before.
We have solar panels on our roof. We are sparing with water and heating. The girls’ bikes have almost always come out of rubbish skips. My bike (3 decades old, 5 gears and excessive friction) is still covering 5-20 hilly miles each week ... and deteriorating only slightly more rapidly than me (5 decades old, 3 gears and, um, excessive description). And there can be few others who travel with a cheap, 35-year-old pair of flip-flops thrice repaired with dental floss rather than bin them and get a new pair. Actually, this sounds a lot like tightfistedness! Back to environmental concerns...
It truly is a strange, perverse world in which items are so cheap they can be bought for a few days’ use, then thrown away without a care – as in the case of the big pile of discarded camping equipment left at Stablefell campsite. Presumably the real (financial and environmental) costs of disposal and resource depletion are not properly factored into consumer prices.
Well, our 30-year-old campstove had been playing up and a campstove was lying right on top of the rubbish heap. A quick check with the campsite owners, a thorough spray with sanitiser, a few days ‘quarantined’ in a bag, and we had a spanking new campstove – with a toaster section! (Then Dave’s dad managed to fix our old stove, so we are now the proud owners of two working campstoves.)
We headed to the Yorkshire Wolds for a few nights to see family, before moving north to Scotland. On the way up, we stopped for a picnic lunch and short walk at the lovely Derwent Reservoir and Pow Hill Country Park in the North Pennines AONB. Beautiful!
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