Category: Calm

Stay cool

Image by Guy Carpenter

We're fickle creatures. No sooner have we stopped saying, 'it'd be nice to get some sun,' we start with, 'ooh, it's hot'. So what to do when you can't stand the heat?

Here are a few quick suggestions for cool places to go and things to do when it's too sunny - if there can really be such a thing?

Take a walk by a cool Dales stream or river - you can't go far without coming across one. Paddling optional. Take the plunge with some wild swimming or just pop along to Ingleton Open Air Lido

Go underground - the temperature in caves like Ingleborough, Stump Cross and White Scar tends to be around 9 degrees centrigade, regardless of the weather outside.

The huge thick walls of castles such as Skipton and Bolton Castle were designed to keep out intruders, but they're also pretty effective at shielding visitors from the sun.

Enjoy a walk in the dappled shade in one of our wonderful woodlands such as Hackfall or Skipton Castle Woods.

Climb to the top of a hill in search of cooler air, perhaps one of the lesser known Dales 30 and look around to see if there's anyone around. Chances are you'll be entirely alone.

Enjoy a walk in the shade, maybe exploring the arches of the immense Ribblehead Viaduct, or the inside of the Hoffmann Kiln.

Find a lovely cool piece of limestone pavement (rocks foundation, not by the road!), lie down on your back and gaze up at the endless sky and watch the birds swooping below.

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167. Pendragon Castle

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Image thanks to Paul Harris

David Bellamy described the area around Mallerstang as "England's last wilderness".

It does feel pretty remote in the Eden Valley between Garsdale head and Kirkby Stephen. The brooding fells in the distance add to the unworldly feel.

Pendragon Castle sits close to the river, and is said to have been built by King Arthur's father, Uther Pendragon. It's more likely that a previous wooden structure was built on that site at that time.

There are plenty of stories associated with this atmospheric place: that the Roman's first built a fort here (a Roman coin was found but no other evidence); that Uther Pendragon tried to re-route the river Eden to provide a moat, that Saxon invaders poisoned the water in the well and killed 100 of Pendragon's men.

According to its Grade I listing, the fortified tower dates from the 12th century. It was abandoned after a raid by a Scottish army set fire to it, rebuilt in the 14th century and burnt down again in the 16th century. Pendragon's heyday was probably in the 17th century when Lady Anne Clifford (who also owned Skipton Castle) restored it and added stables, a brew and bake house. She sounds like a remarkable woman, arguing her right to the castle for 40 years, and continuing to visit the castle until 1676 when she died at the great age of 86.

Now there is enough of the building for it to still be recognisable as a castle, and it's worth visiting not just for its history but the sense that you might have just stepped into a Famous Five mystery, full of the promise of adventure. Horsemen may yet still appear out of the mist to search for King Arthur's relatives.

Pendragon Castle is privately owned but access is permitted so long as you take care not to damage the building or take risks around the castle as parts are still in perilous condition despite some restoration.
All images thanks to Paul Harris.

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Thornborough Henges

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Image: A M Hunt from Yorkshire Archaeological Aerial Mapping

There are plenty of stunning places in and around the Yorkshire Dales that are not well-known despite their unique features. Thornborough is on the fringes of the Dales, between the A1 and Masham and yet barely anyone has ever heard of it.

The name may be familiar to a few thanks to Thornborough Cider, but hardly anyone knows of one of England's most significant and mysterious prehistoric sites - the Thornborough Henges.

Called by some the "Stonehenge of the North", this site is very different to its Southern cousin. There are no stones to see and neither are there any crowds.

The Thornborough Henges are thought to be over 5000 years old and consist of three circular mounds, ditches and banks.

You can see and feel some of the scale of these curious landmarks by wandering around the site but these aerial images by A M Hunt of Yorkshire Archaeological Aerial Mapping give a much clearer indication. It's one of the largest ritual religious sites in Britain.

Image: A M Hunt from Yorkshire Archaeological Aerial Mapping

The Thornborough Henges are thought to be the world's only triple henge complex.

Unlike some prehistoric sites where your imagination has to work harder than your eyes to discern any traces of the past, at Thornborough it's still possible to see the ditches and banks, particularly the northern henge.

The structure is apparently in alignment with Orion's Belt in the night sky, something they have in common with Egypt's Great Pyramids. Some believe the Thornborough Henges were built even before the pyramids. If so, what made man so many miles apart decide to build these great works in line with Orion?

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Hay meadows

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Say the words 'hay meadows' in the Yorkshire Dales and it's as if you've cast a magic spell. Anyone hearing them will smile and wax lyrical about their beauty. Say these words in Swaledale and the effect is even more marked. The pride on local's faces is like a beacon of joy.

This might sound like exaggeration to those who've never seen the Yorkshire Dales hay meadows in late May and June. Those who have enjoyed their rich, vibrant colours will now be nodding wisely in agreement with me.

So what's so special about the hay meadows at this time of year? For a start, over 95% of meadows in the UK have been lost over the last 50 years so any that remain are highly prized, for both their beauty and biodiversity. Some of the best hay meadows in the UK are to be found in the Yorkshire Dales. A carefully and traditionally managed hay meadow can support up to 120 different species of wildflowers and other plants, as well as many species of invertebrates, bats, mammals and birds.

It isn't just a simple case of letting the grass grow and being glad to see a few wildflowers among the grasses.
Not every field is suitable for a hay meadow. They need to be fertile, sheltered and flat enough to cut the hay. You can't make a good hay meadow in a year - some of the restored hay meadows in the Dales are the product of at least two decades of careful management.

The meadows are to be found in valley bottoms where the soil is deeper and richer. These fields are grazed by cattle for some of the year, adding manure to fertilise the soil. Then the stock is moved, often to higher ground, and the meadows are left to grow. Deciding when to cut the hay is a careful judgement. Farmers have to balance the growth of the crop with the reliability of the weather forecast. Hay has to be left to dry out in the fields so several dry days are necessary. Later cutting enables the wildflowers and grasses to set seeds and act as an important habitat, making the hay meadows ever richer.

It's thanks to a partnership between farmers, the Yorkshire Dales Millennium Trust and Yorkshire Dales National Park Authority called the Hay Time Project that we have such rich meadows here. The Flowers of the Dales Festival runs from March to October, celebrating the lush hay meadows with walks, courses and family activities.

Best places to see hay meadows

You can see lush hay meadows all around the Yorkshire Dales although some of the richest and best known are in and around Muker in Swaledale. Look for them near Askrigg in Wensleydale, around Yockenthwaite in Langstrothdale, and by Grassington in Wharfedale.

You can download some suggested walks around hay meadows from YDMT.

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Gardens in the Dales

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Garden behind Hudson House, Reeth

We're trend-setters here in the Yorkshire Dales.

Years before people were properly talking about mindfulness and the benefits of spending time in nature, we were celebrating the joys of slowing down and being outdoors in our Yorkshire Dales Guide to Health & Happiness.

Now it seems that Chelsea Flower Show and the gardening world are raving about the beauty of wilderness gardens and a more natural feel.

Of course, this is what we've known all along, and there are plenty of good examples in the Dales. I smiled when I saw some of the 'back to nature' Chelsea Show gardens on TV: it looked like designers, gardeners and the Duchess of Cambridge spent hours re-creating the feel of the bits of my own garden that I've not quite got round to taming... Laziness can apparently be made to look effortful and fashionable.

The Yorkshire Dales are more often associated with acres of grass and hill so you might be surprised to know just how many carefully maintained and stunning gardens there are here. The best known is on the fringes of the Dales in Harrogate: the RHS Harlow Carr, but it's some of the lesser known gardens that are the real gems. As you travel up towards the Dales, you might like to visit a very different type of garden: the breathtakingly beautiful Studley Royal Water Garden, part of the Fountains Abbey Estate and a World Heritage Site.

Parceval Hall gardens

Surprisingly few people have heard of one of my favourite places. The
Parceval Hall Gardens by Trollers Gill near Appletreewick are a fine example of the Arts & Crafts movement. There's a rock garden, rhododendrons, rose garden, camellia walk and plenty of tranquil spaces in which to rest and reflect. The setting is stunning, in a secret hollow of the Dales, as if it's been carved out of the wilder neighbouring countryside.

If you like rhododendrons, don't miss the Himalayan Gardens near Masham, where countless sculptures are displayed through the garden and woodland.

Constable Burton Hall Garden near Leyburn is particularly known for its annual Tulip Festival.

Nearby is the medieval Bolton Castle where you'll find one of England's most northernly vineyards and a maze.

Wensley

The garden at Millgate House in Richmond is a wonderful surprise - you pass through an ordinary looking door way off the market square into a special plantsman's paradise, with every plant carefully chosen for colour and interest. It's not a big garden, more of an intimate oasis of beauty.

Another hidden retreat can be found on the main road between Leyburn and Hawes, at Aysgarth Rock Garden. It's a small compact rock garden that makes full use of every nook and cranny. When visiting White Rose Candles one day I was delighted to find the tiny little community garden in Wensley, the kind of wildlife garden that so many Chelsea Show gardeners try to emulate.

Another hidden gem can be found in Reeth behind Hudson House - the community garden. It's a small space that's particularly lovely in early Summer and there's also a tiny exhibition in the Old Privy!

The 'Prince of Alpine Gardeners', Reginald Farrar was from Clapham in the Yorkshire Dales, and was an intriguing and eccentric plant collector. One of the stories often told about him involves him loading a shotgun with seeds from his travels and firing them into the rocks on his land at Ingleborough. You can see some of his creation along the Ingleborough Nature Trail.

Some of the most interesting and charming gardens in and around the Dales are in private or trust ownership and not often open to the public, so do take a look at the National Garden Scheme programme for openings of places like Old Sleningford, Norton Conyers, Clifton Castle, the Grange, Boxwood House, and Markenfield Hall.

Note: opening times for all the gardens mentioned above vary so please ensure you check details before planning a visit.

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Guide to Health & Happiness

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When I was able to move back to Yorkshire almost 15 years ago, there were many draws, including fresh air, being in the hills, the sense of community and changing seasons. Over time I realised that since moving back, I've felt much healthier and if I'm feeling down or stressed, find time spent outside in the beauty of the Yorkshire Dales is soothing and up-lifting.

I started to think about the contrast between city and country living, and to wonder whether there were scientific reasons why time spent outdoors among natural beauty is good for you. I found plenty of research endorsing what I'd instinctively felt.

I realised that part of the reason for my passion in promoting the Yorkshire Dales to visitors was that I wanted to share the positive benefits of spending time here with others.

After a lot of conversations with other people who live in the Dales, talking about what they love, what makes them happy and their insiders' tips for places to go and things to do, I had the idea of compiling all these thoughts and ideas into a short guide. The Yorkshire Dales Guide to Health & Happiness was the result.

We're not experts but we do hope that flicking through the guide will offer some simple, often free, ideas for things to do and places to enjoy which might help improve your mood or make you feel better in some way.

Download the Yorkshire Dales Guide to Health & Happiness free right here. Please help to spread a little happiness by sharing this and telling others about it!

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Romantic Ruins

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When I'm writing these blogs I like to either already know about a place or thing, or be able to double check the details. Today's blog is more of a musing, a series of unanswered questions.

We know that people have lived here since Roman times. Some places rose to prominence for a while, often thanks to the riches from the wool trade or lead-mining. Then life changed and some of the villages and buildings that were once important, became less so. The beautiful little village of Wensley is a good example - it used to be a market town, the 'capital' of Wensleydale but after the plague in the 1500s many villagers moved away.

I'm fascinated by the way places change in fortune, the effort once put into buildings that belonged to people with wealth and that have since become abandoned.

There are romantic ruins all over the Yorkshire Dales, sometimes with ghost or other stories attached to them.

One of my favourites is Lobley Hall. It's a grand name for a building that's not so big but which clearly once belonged to some one of importance, with stables or outbuildings attached to the main house. It stands alone and quite isolated near Ilton and Druids Temple.

The front door lintel bears two initials and a date, which I think is 1668. Once upon a time someone was proud enough of their house to have their initials carved into it. The derelict building is now fenced off and dangerous to explore. Despite the trees growing from the inside though, you can still see features such as the enormous fire place where a family must have once gathered to cook and warm themselves. There are mullioned windows with chamfered sills. Such hope and plans must have gone into the building of this house, and it's now just a romantic ruin. No-one seems to know any of its history, why it was built here or what happened to its occupants. How can such a substantial building just lose its history?

What are the stories behind these abandoned houses in the Dales? Did the family linger through troubled times or was there a moment when they suddenly decided to move on? Why didn't anyone ever move into the house in their place? Will these beautiful buildings be gradually taken over by nature, with more trees growing through their roof? I guess we'll never know so I'll just carry on inventing my own stories.

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Hares

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Brown Hare by Simon Phillpotts

Hares are curious and beautiful creatures: I always feel awe and wonder when I spot one. We were brought up to think of them as magical, but never quite knew what their special powers were meant to be.

They're sometimes confused with rabbits but are really very different creatures. They have longer ears with black tips, intense amber eyes (perhaps one source of the many folk stories about them), and long, powerful hind legs. When hares run they hold their tails down, whereas rabbits hold up their tails showing their white bobtails. Hares can run incredibly fast - up to 45 miles an hour over short distances.

Hares live above ground without burrows and create shallow depressions or 'forms' in grass to give birth to their young leverets.

We're fortunate to be able to often spot brown hares in the Yorkshire Dales but their numbers are decreasing nationwide, partly due to intensive farming practices and the loss of so many hay meadows. They're the only game species in Britain without a closed season for shooting so the Hare Preservation Trust are campaigning for better protection for hares.

When I started to look into the origin of hares' magical powers, I was amazed at the number of worldwide folk stories that feature them. I can't think of any other creature which has such contrasting tales told about them. Sometimes the stories tell of the hare's trickery and wickedness, others hold the hare in high esteem as goddesses, fertility symbols and special messengers. They're often associated with the moon, with witchcraft and shape-shifting.

There's a poem from the middle ages which gives over 70 different names for the hare: the jumper, racer, rascal, nibbler, funk-the-ditch, ill-met, dew-flirt, home-late, starer, skulker, frisky legs, race-the-wind, scare-them-man, faith-breaker and scoundrel among them. These names are said to have been used to avoid actually naming the hare because they could inflict evil.

Thankfully most people now seem to see the hare much more positively. In Germany easter eggs are brought by the "Osterhase", and Easter hare instead of a bunny. Hares feature in the work of many Yorkshire Dales artists including Stacey Moore, Nolon Stacey and Hester Cox.

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Nature's Cure

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I write this blog at my desk by the window that looks out into the garden, river and an area I call a 'wildlife' area. The river level changes daily, and the greenery is gradually intensifying, becoming denser and richer.

Almost every day I think it would be good to take a daily photo to show how the view changes through the seasons. But then I remember that I sit here every day and can see it for myself. Isn't it better to just gaze at it each day rather than glimpsing it through a lens?

Better still is to go outside and spend some time slowly discovering every new bud, each wildflower, notice the daily change in river levels and listen to the bird song. Sometimes it's simply enjoyable. On other days the pleasure is even greater. It can feel like an escape from the daily grind of news of wars and politics. It's an energy top-up or mood boost. Like any mood-enhancing drug, once you know it works, it's almost addictive. Luckily there's also the extra benefit that nature is always there and it costs nothing to just look.

More and more people are turning to 'nature's cure', recognising the power of spending time outdoors to make us feel better, more optimistic or simply to relax. Even when things aren't going to plan, it's very reassuring to watch the same tree gradually grow and unfurl its leaves in Spring, to become a home for insects and birds, to stand tall and strong through the year. Watching each little detail day by day brings tiny bursts of pleasure, that combine into a sense of contentment.

I recently bought a copy of The Wild Remedy by Emma Mitchell, as much for the illustrations as for her lyrical words. Her hand-drawn illustrations of flowers and birds are very satisfying and the photos of collections of finds such as shells, feathers and flowers on a wood or hessian background remind me of the school nature table, now recreated on my own window-sill. Each month she describes the delight in small details. How can we so easily forget these pleasures, or fail to recognise their importance?

Yesterday I read that the 'Calm' meditation app is now worth over £1billion, with over 40 million downloads. They're both incredible figures. I'm not sure what it means for the human race though? Is it good that more people understand the need to be still and just 'be' ,or bad that we need an app to do it? I wonder if this will mean more people eventually turn to nature to de-stress and feel better, or if they'll try to replace the uplifting sound of real bird-song with recorded versions?

When I was a teenager and felt a bit 'under the weather' my mum used to suggest I went for a walk. I'd grumpily set off, cross that she was dismissing whatever woes I had with the simple remedy of putting on my shoes and heading outside. But it does help. Now my own daughter is studying for A levels and I'm pleased to see how she takes a break by going outside for a while, sometimes commenting on things she's noticed when she comes back inside. Some doctors are now even prescribing walks.

The news has been full of environmental concerns, so hopefully more people will wake up and realise we need nature as much as nature needs us. Sometimes we only pay attention to ideas when they come from elsewhere or are written about in trendy lifestyle magazines. This is the case with the idea of 'Forest Bathing', an idea that originated in Japan where it is called 'shinrin yoku'. The idea is to spend time in woodlands (I'd certainly recommend a walk in Hackfall or Skipton Castle Woods), enjoying the therapeutic powers of nature to feel calmer and happier. My mum didn't give it a fancy name, but I'm glad she made me do it.

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Paragliding

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When I first started to write this blog I wanted to include as many different ways to enjoy and discover the Yorkshire Dales as I could. Until now the focus has been on places and things I've directly experienced myself.

Today's entry is certainly a very different way to enjoy the beauty of the Dales. I haven't yet tried it myself though - still dithering about whether I'm brave enough!

Thanks to amazing footage by drone photographers we've become more used to seeing the Yorkshire Dales as a birds' eye view.

Take a trip with Dean Crosby and you can actually become a bird. Well, almost. Dean is a multiple British Paragliding champion and former National Team captain. He runs Active Edge, a paragliding company in the Yorkshire Dales, and is keen to encourage beginners to sample the exhilaration of paragliding and being borne along by nothing other than the wind. He's been flying and teaching paragliding and hang gliding from the Dales for over 30 years.

They offer Fundays as well as longer courses so you can enjoy a shorter session either as a one-off or before deciding if you'd like to learn all the skills. They welcome anyone over 16 year and there's no upper limit. A reasonable level of fitness is needed as you'd have to be capable of walking up small hills to get airborne.

I'm not exactly scared of heights but have a fear that I'll be high in the sky and then suddenly want to shout "get me down, get me down!". Dean explains that many pilots are actually afraid of heights, but once you've understood how a glider works and how to stay safe you will become comfortable with the idea of flying.

I like the idea that the training builds up height gradually. You start by running down a slope, staying on the ground and then do small hops and move a little higher each time you fly. Compared to the way birds seem to learn to fly straight out of their nests, not quite knowing if they'll make it, this sounds a much better idea!

You can choose a funday or tandem paragliding which sounds particularly good to me. Tandem paragliding offers a short flight of 20-30 minutes, chance to relax and admire the view and take photos.

As Dean says, the Yorkshire Dales offer some fantastic paragliding sites, with rolling hills, open moors and unobstructed landscapes for beginners. Their sites are mostly around around Settle, Ingleton, Hawes and Kettlewell so you'd be guaranteed to enjoy some of the most stunning green views in the country. For more details see Active Edge.