A Month in Yorkshire

CHAPTER XVIII

Early Morn—High Force—Rock and Water—A Talk with the Waitress—Hills and Cottages—Cronkley Scar—The Weel—Caldron Snout—Soothing Sound—Scrap from an Album—View into Birkdale—A Quest for Dinner—A Westmoreland Farm—Household Matters—High Cope Nick—Mickle Fell—The Boys’ Talk—The Hill-top—Glorious Prospect—A Descent—Solitude and Silence—A Moss—Stainmore—Brough—The Castle Ruin—Reminiscences.

The next day dawned, and a happy awaking was mine, greeted by the same rushing voice, no longer solemn and mysterious, but chanting, as one might imagine, a morning song of praise. I looked out, and saw with pleasurable surprise the fall full in view from the window: a long white sheet of foam, glistening in the early sunbeams.

All the slope between the inn and the fall is covered by a thick plantation of firs, ash, hazel, and a teeming undergrowth, and through this by paths winding hither and thither you have to descend. Now the path skirts precipitous rocks, hung with ivy, now drops gently among ferns to an embowered seat, until at a sudden turn the noise of the fall bursts grandly upon you. A little farther, and the trees no longer screening, you see the deep stony chasm, and the peat-stained water making three perpendicular leaps down a precipice seventy feet in height. It is a striking scene, what with the grim crags, the wild slopes, and the huge masses lying at the bottom and in the bed of the stream; and the impressive volume of sound.

We can scramble down to the very foot of the limestone bluff that projects in the middle, leaving a channel on each side, down one of which a mere thread of water trickles; but in time of flood both are filled, and then the fall is seen and heard in perfection. Now we can examine the smooth water-worn cliff, and see where something like crystallization has been produced by a highly-heated intrusive rock. And here and there your eye will rest with pleasure on patches of moss and fern growing luxuriantly in dripping nooks and crannies.

You see how the water, rebounding from its second plunge, shoots in a broken mass of foam into the brown pool below, and therein swirls and swashes for a while, and then escapes by an outlet that you might leap across, talking to thousands of stones as it spreads itself out in the shallow bed. Standing with your back to the fall, and looking down the stream, the view, shut in by the trees on one side, by a rough grassy acclivity on the other, is one that lures you to explore it, striding along the rugged margin, or from one lump of rock to another.

Then returning to the diverging point in the path, we mount to the top of the fall. Here the scene is, if possible, wilder than below. The rock, as far as you can see, is split into a thousand crevices, and through these the river rushes to its leap. Such a river-bed you never saw before. The solid uprising portions are of all dimensions, and you step from one to the other without first feeling if they are steady. Here and there you climb, and coming to the top of the bluff you can look over and watch the water in its headlong plunge. The brown tinge contrasts beautifully with the white foam; and lying stretched on the sun-warmed rock, your eye becomes fascinated by the swift motion and the dancing spray. Then sit awhile on the topmost point and look up stream, and enjoy the sight of the rapids, and the multitudinous cascades. Though the rocks now lift their heads above water you will notice that all are smoothly worn by the floods of ages. The view is bounded there by a mighty high-backed fell; and in the other direction brown moorlands meet the horizon, all looking glad in the glorious sunshine.

I loitered away two hours around the fall in unbroken solitude, and returned to the inn to breakfast before all the dew was dry. The house was built about twenty-five years ago, said the waitress, when the road was made to connect the lead mines of Alston Moor, in Cumberland, with the highways of Durham. There was not much traffic in the winter, for then nobody travelled but those who were compelled—farmers, cattle-dealers, and miners; but in summer the place was kept alive by numerous visitors to the fall. Most were contented with a sight of High Force; but others went farther, and looked at Caldron Snout and High Cope Nick. Sometimes a school came up for a day’s holiday; they had entertained one the day before—two wagon-loads of Roman Catholic children. True enough, our omnibus had met them returning.

The house looks across the valley to Holwick Fell, and were it not for the trees in front, would have but a bare and, at times, desolate prospect. The whole premises are as clean as whitewash can make them; even the stone fences are whitewashed. The Duke of Cleveland is proprietor: he ought to be proud of his tenants.

How glad the morning seemed when I stepped forth again into the sunshine to travel a few miles farther up the Tees. The road still ascends and curves into the bleak and lonely fells, which stretch across the west of Durham and into Cumberland. In winter they are howling wastes, and in snow-storms appalling, as I remember from painful experience. But in summer there is a monotonous grandeur about them comparable only with that of the ocean.

Just beyond the sixteenth milestone from Alston I got over the fence, and followed a path edging away on the left towards the river. It crosses pastures, little meadows, coarse swampy patches sprinkled with flowers; disappears in places; but while you can see the river or a cottage you need not go astray. There is something about the cottages peculiar to a hill-country: the ground-floor is used as a barn and stable, and the dwelling-rooms are above, approached by a stone stair on the outside. With their walls freshly whitewashed, they appear as bright specks widely scattered in the wilderness; and though no tree adorns or shelters them, they betoken the presence of humanity, and there is comfort in that. And withal they enjoy the purest breezes, the most sparkling water, flowery meadows, and hills purple with heather when summer is over. If you go to the door the inmates will invite you to sit, and listen eagerly to the news you bring. Meanwhile you may note the evidences of homely comfort and apparent contentment. A girl who was pulling dock-leaves—“dockans,” as she called them—told me they were to be boiled for the pig.

Ere long Cronkley Scar comes in sight—a tremendous sombre precipice of the rock known to geologists as greenstone, in which, if learned in such matters, you may peruse many examples of metamorphic phenomena. And hereabouts, as botanists tell us, there are rare and interesting plants to be discovered. The Scar is on the Yorkshire side; but the stream is here so shallow and full of stones, that to wade across would only be an agreeable footbath.

Now the stream makes a bend between two hills, and looking up the vale we see the lower slopes of Mickle Fell—the highest mountain in Yorkshire. We shall perhaps climb to its summit ere the day be many hours older.

From the last dwelling—a farm-house—I mounted the hill, and followed a course by compass to hit the river above the bend. Soon all signs of habitation were left behind, and the trackless moorland lay before me, overspread with a dense growth of ling, wearisome to walk through. And how silent! A faint sound of rushing water comes borne on the breeze, and that is all.

Then we come to the declivity, and the view opens to the north-west, swell beyond swell, each wilder in aspect, as it seems, than the other. And there beneath us glisten the shining curves of the Tees. The compass has not misled us, and we descend to the Weel, as this part of the river is called, where for about a mile its channel deepens, and the current is so tranquil that you might fancy it a lengthened pool. We go no higher, but after gazing towards the fells in which the river draws its source, we turn and follow the Weel to a rift in the hill-side. The current quickens, the faint sound grows louder, and presently coming to the brink of a rocky chasm we behold the cataract of Caldron Snout. The Tees here makes a plunge of two hundred feet, dashing from rock to rock, twisting, whirling, eddying, and roaring in its dark and tortuous channel. The foam appears the whiter, and the grass all the greener, by contrast with the blackness of the riven crags, and although no single plunge equals that at High Force, you will perhaps be more impressed here. You are here shut out from the world amid scenes of savage beauty, and the sense of isolation begets a profounder admiration of the natural scene, and enjoyment of the manifold watery leaps, as you pause at each while scrambling down the hill-side.

About half-way down the fall is crossed by a bridge—a rough beam only, with a rude hand-rail—from which you can see the fall in either direction and note the stony bends of the river below till they disappear behind the hill. From near its source to Caldron the Tees divides Durham from Westmoreland, and in all its further downward course from Yorkshire.

Let me sit for an hour by the side of a fall, and watch the swift play of the water, and hear its ceaseless splash and roar, and whatever cobwebs may have gathered in my mind, from whatever cause, are all swept clean away. Serenity comes into my heart, and the calm sunshine pervades my existence for months—nay, years afterwards. And what a joy it is to recall—especially in a London November—or rather to renew, the happy mood inspired by the waterfall among the mountains!

I have at times fancied that the effect of the noise is somewhat similar to that described of narcotics by those who indulge therein. The mind forgets the body, and thinks whatsoever it listeth. Whether or not, my most various and vivid day-dreams have been dreamt by the side of a waterfall.

It seems, moreover, at such times, as if memory liked to ransack her old stores. And now I suddenly recollected Hawkeye’s description of the tumbling water at Glenn’s Falls, as narrated in The Last of the Mohicans, which I had read when a boy. Turn to the page, reader, and you will admire its faithfulness. Anon came a rhyme which a traveller who went to see the falls of the Clyde sixty years ago, tells us he copied from the album at Lanark:

Southey, who read everything, perhaps saw this before he wrote his Fall of Lodore.

And we, too, must be gone; and now that we have seen

we will gather ourselves up and travel on.

But whither? I desired a public-house; but no house of any sort was to be seen—nothing but the scrubby hill-side, and mossy-headed rocks peeping out with a frown at the mortal who had intruded into their dominion. The end of a meadow, however, comes over the slope on the other side of the bridge; perhaps from the top of the slope something may be discerned. Yes, there was a cottage. I hastened thither, but it proved to be an old tenement now used as a byre. I looked farther, and, about a mile distant, saw two farm-houses. The view had opened into Birkdale, and there, on the left, rose the huge, long-backed form of Mickle Fell, whose topmost height was my next aim, and I could test the hospitality of the houses on the way thither.

We are now in a corner of Westmoreland which, traversed by Birkdale, presents diversified alpine features. The valley is green; the meadows are flowery and dotted with cattle; the hills, stern and high, are browsed by sheep; and Maize Beck, a talkative mountain stream, flows with many a stony bend along the bottom—the dividing line between Westmoreland and Yorkshire. There are no trees; and for miles wide the only building is here and there a solitary byre.

My inquiry for dinner at the first of the two houses was answered by an invitation to sit down, and ready service of bread, butter, milk, and cheese. I made a capital repast, and drank as much genuine milk at one sitting as would charge a Londoner’s supply for two months. The father was out sheep-shearing, leaving the mother with a baby and four big children at home. But only the eldest boy looked healthy; the others had the sodden, unwashed appearance supposed to be peculiar to dwellers in the alleys of large towns. No wonder, I thought, for the kitchen, the one living room, was as hot and stifling as a Bohemian cottage. The atmosphere was close and disagreeably odorous; a great turf fire burned in the grate, and yet the outer door was kept as carefully shut as if July breezes were hurtful. I tried to make the good woman aware of the ill consequences of bad air; but old habits are not to be changed in an hour. She didn’t think that overmuch wind could do anybody good, and it was best for babies to keep them warm. They managed to do without the doctor: only fetched him when they must. There was none nearer than Middleton. Six weeks previously, when baby was born, they had to send for him in a hurry; but Tees was in flood, and Caldron Snout so full that the water ran over the bridge; her boy, however, got across, and rode away the nine miles at full speed on his urgent errand.

What with chairs and tables, racks and shelves, the dresser, the clock, the settee under the window, three dogs, a cat, and a pigeon—to say nothing of the family—the room was almost as crowded as the steerage of a ship. The pigeon—the only one in the dale—had come from parts unknown a few weeks before of its own accord, and was now a household pet, cooing about the floor, and on civil terms with the cat. But the children feared it would die in winter, as they had no peas in those parts, nothing but grass. Sixty acres of “mowing grass” and a run for sheep comprise the farm.

While the Ordnance Survey was in Westmoreland, two sappers lodged in the house for months; and the eldest son, an intelligent lad, had much to tell concerning their operations. What pains they took; how many times they toiled to the top of Mickle Fell only to find that up there it was too windy for their observations, and so forth. Sometimes a stranger came and wanted a guide to High Cope Nick, and then he went with his father. Two photographers had come the preceding autumn, and took views of the Nick on pieces of paper with a box that had a round glass in it; but the views wasn’t very good ones.

High Cope Nick, as its name indicates, is a deep notch or chasm in the hills overlooking the low country of Westmoreland about four miles from this Birkdale farm. “It’s nigh hand as brant4 as a wall,” said the boy; “you can hardly stand on’t.” It is one of the scenes which I reserve for a future holiday.

The woman could not hear of taking more than sixpence for my dinner, and thought herself overpaid with that. The two boys were going up the fell to look after sheep, so we started together, crossed the beck on stepping-stones, followed by two dogs, and soon began the long ascent. There is no path: you stride through the heather, through the tough bent, across miry patches, and stony slopes, past swallow-holes wherein streams of water disappear in heavy rains; and find at times by the side of the beck a few yards of smooth sweet turf. The beck is noisy in its freakish channel, yet pauses here and there and fills a sober pool, wherein you may see fish, and perchance a drowned sheep. I saw four on the way upwards, and the sight of the swollen carcases made me defer drinking till nearer the source. I could hardly believe the lads’ word that fifteen hundred sheep were feeding on the hill, so few did they appear scattered over the vast surface.

“How many sheep do you consider fair stock to the acre?” asked Sir John Sinclair during one of his visits to the hills.

“Eh! mun, ye begin at wrang end,” was the answer. “Ye should ax how many acres till a sheep.” Of such land as this the North Riding contains four hundred thousand acres.

Besides the sheep, added the youth, “there’s thirty breeding galloways on the hill. There’s nothing pays better than breeding galloways. You can sell the young ones a year or year and a half old for eight pounds apiece, and there’s no much fash wi’ ’em.”

When the time came to part, I sat down and tried to give the boys a peep at their home through my telescope. But in vain; they could distinguish nothing, see nothing but a haze of green or brown. On the other hand, they could discern a sheep or some moving object at a great distance which I could not discover at all with the glass. They turned aside to their flock, and I onwards up the hill. The beck had diminished to a rill, and presently I came to its source—a delicious spring bubbling from a rock, and took a quickening draught.

At length the acclivity becomes gentle, the horizon spreads wider and wider, and we reach the cairn erected by the sappers on the summit of Mickle Fell, 2580 feet above the sea—the highest, as before remarked, of the Yorkshire mountains. Glorious is the prospect! Hill and dale in seemingly endless succession—there rolling away to the blue horizon, here bounded by a height that hides all beyond. In the west appears the great gathering of mountains which keep watch over the Lake country, there Skiddaw, there Helvellyn, yonder Langdale Pikes, and the Old Man of Coniston; summit after summit, their outlines crossing and recrossing in picturesque confusion. Conspicuous in the north Cross Fell—in which spring the head-waters of Tees—heaves his brown back in majestic sullenness some three hundred feet higher than the shaggy brow we stand on. Hence you can trace the vale of Tees for miles. Then gazing easterly, we catch far, far away the Cleveland hills, and, following round the circle, the blue range of the Hambletons, then Penyghent, Whernside, and Ingleborough, with many others, bring us round once more to the west. Again and again will your eye travel round the glorious panorama.

Mickle Fell is one of the great summits in the range described by geologists as the Pennine chain—the backbone of England. Its outline is characteristic of that of the county; bold and abrupt to the west; sloping gradually down to the east. Hence the walk up from High Force or Birkdale calls for no arduous climbing, it is only tedious. From the western extremity you look down into the vale of the Eden, where the green meadows, the broad fields of grain, dotted with trees and bordered with hedgerows, appear the more beautiful from contrast with the brown tints of the surrounding hills.

Now for the descent. I scanned the great slope on the south for a practicable route, and fixed beforehand on the objects by which to direct my steps when down in the hollows—where scant outlook is to be had. Lowest of all lies what appears to be a light green meadow; beyond it rises a Mickle Fell on a small scale: I will make my way to the top of that, and there take a new departure. All between is a wild expanse of rock and heather. A sober run soon brought me to the edge of a beck, and keeping along its margin, now on one side, now on the other, choosing the firmest ground, I made good progress; and with better speed, notwithstanding the windings, than through the tough close heather. Every furlong the beck grows wider and fuller, and here and there the banks curve to the form of an oval basin smooth with short grass; favourite haunts for the sheep. The silly creatures take to flight nimbly as goats at the appearance of an intruder, and I lie down to enjoy the solitude. The silence is oppressive—almost awful. Shut in already by the huge hill-sides, I am still more hidden in this hollow. The beck babbles; the fugitive sheep all unseen bleat timidly; a curlew comes with its melancholy cry wheeling round and round above my head; but the overwhelming silence loses nothing of its force. At times a faint hollow roar, as if an echo from the distant ocean, seems to fill all the air for an instant, and die mysteriously away. It is a time to commune with one’s own heart and be still: to feel how poor are artificial pleasures compared to those which are common to all—the simplest, which can be had for nothing—namely, sunshine, air, and running water, and the fair broad earth to walk upon.

Onwards. The beck widens, and rushes into a broad stony belt to join a stream hurrying down the vale from the west. I crossed, and came presently to the supposed bright green meadow. It was a swamp—a great sponge. To go round it would be tedious: I kept straight on, and by striding from one rushy hummock to another, though not without difficulty in the middle, where the sponge was all but liquid, and the rushes wide apart, I got across. Then the smaller hill began: it was steep, and without a break in the heather, compelling a toilsome climb. However, it induces wholesome exercise. From the top I saw Stainmoor, and as I had anticipated, the road which runs across it from Barnard Castle into Westmoreland. I came down upon it about four miles from Brough.

It is a wild region. A line of tall posts is set up along the way, as in an alpine pass, suggestive of winter snows deep and dangerous. By-and-by we come to a declivity, and there far below we see the vale of Eden, and descend towards it, the views continually changing with the windings of the road. Then a hamlet, with children playing on the green, and geese grazing among the clumps of gorse, and trees, and cultivation; and all the while the hills appear to grow more and more mountainous as we descend. Then Brough comes in sight—the little hard-featured Westmoreland town—whitewashed walls, blue slate roofs, the church a good way off on an eminence, and beyond that, on a grassy bluff, the ruins of a castle partly screened by trees.

I wanted rest and refreshment, and found both at the Castle Inn. An hour later I strolled out to the ruin. The mount on which it stands rises steeply from the Helbeck, a small tributary of the Eden, and terminates precipitously towards the west. The keep still rears itself proudly aloft, commanding the shattered towers, the ancient gateway, the dismantled walls and broken stair, and the country for miles around. Fallen masses lie partly buried in the earth, and here and there above the rough stonework overhangs as if ready to follow. While sauntering now within, now without, you can look across the cultivated landscape, or to the town, and the great slope of Helbeck Fell behind it; and you will perhaps deem it a favourable spot to muse away the hour of sunset, when the old pile is touched with golden light. Thick as the walls are, Time and dilapidations have made them look picturesque. One of the spoilers was William the Lion of Scotland, who finding here a Norman fortress in 1174, took it, along with other Westmoreland strongholds; and was taken himself in the course of the same year at Alnwick. The Rey Cross on Stainmoor—still a monumental site—marked the southern limit of the Scottish principality of Cumberland; hence, the hungry reivers north of Tweed had always an excuse for crossing over to beat the bounds after their manner. Twice afterwards was Brough Castle repaired, and burnt to a shell. The second restoration was carried out in 1659 by the Lady Anne Clifford, Countess Dowager of Pembroke, who recorded the fact on a stone over the entrance, enumerating all her titles, among which were “High Sheriffess by inheritance of the county of Westmoreland, and Lady of the Honour of Skipton,” and ending with a text of Scripture—Isaiah lviii, 12. After the last fire, whosoever would pillaged the castle; the stone bearing the Countess’s inscription was taken down, and used in the repair of Brough mill, and the ruins became a quarry, out of which were built sheds and cottages. The large masses of masonry, which now lie embedded in the earth, fell in 1792.