Day 15

Day 15 Scorton to Kidstones Pass

When I was making plans for this trip, Richmond had stood out as the northern most point of the journey & somehow it seemed it was bound to be all downhill from there to the end. Climbing up the hill into the market place only added to this notion that I'd reached some sort of summit.

Walter Wilkinson commented that,

"After Richmond, Swaledale narrows to an Alpine steepness, the real, romantic valley, ever musical with the swift-running river. The road is adorable, going down the hill to cross the river, and then winding with the running water, a live, sentient road bearing one carefully and picturesquely through the difficult country"

After this exhilarating Alpine descent I was back to Yorkshire Dales reality as I slogged up to Downholme (a misnomer, if ever there was one) and across the tops via Bellerby & down into Leyburn & Wensleydale. Not only did the wobbly cyclist have to be on the lookout for trainee tank drivers but she'd also got to have a sure grip on the handle bars as the lorries from the local quarries hurtled past. I counted 5 smashed wing mirrors on a mile long stretch of road & didn't really care who or what was to blame - I just took them as a warning.

The road through Wensleydale itself proved less busy but the real joy was in cycling down the "lovely & precious Bishopdale". It may be the through route from Upper Wharfedale to Wensleydale but traffic was light and it was all new & interesting territory for me. Wonderful landscape - but I wonder where the nearest youth club is for the kids?

At the foot of Kidstones Pass I stopped & waited for Phil to arrive with the car so that I could hitch a lift. This was the one section of Walter's route which I felt totally justified in not relying on leg power. Throughout the first 240 pages of the book, our eccentric puppeteer had railed against the evils of the motorcar but then, on page 241 he confesses that, after being towed by a horse & hay sledge for the first part of the formidable hill, he accepted an offer to tow the truck all the rest of the way to the top by a passing MOTORIST! So much for principles, eh?

We stopped at the top to drink in the late evening sunshine to take in the "world among the bare pastures, the stone walls," and "the grim, treeless mountaintops" around us. As Phil commented, driving down into Wharfedale was like dropping down into a sunlit Garden of Eden after the bleakness of the 1600 ft pass.

Back to diary