An Ancestral Trail

The weather finally smiled kindly upon us on Sunday and so with benign conditions forecast for the whole day, Mister E and I set off for Swaledale. We had plotted our route out in advance and planned to drive beyond Reeth,  cross the beck and then make our way up Slei Gill and from there across the moor to those parts where my ancestors frolicked in the late 18th/early 19th centuries. It wasn't necessarily the shortest route but it avoided some longer steeper climbs.

Of course, we hadn't reckoned on the footbridge across the beck being washed away with the flooding over the last 12 months. Unfortunately there was no advance notice so we wasted time walking down to it through the hamlet of Arkle Town. A chap had managed to negotiate his way across via the one long strut that remained. Whilst it might have been an easy crossing for a trained tightrope walker, the squeals of consternation from his partner, who had been endeavouring to shuffle her way across on her bottom until fear overcame her, were sufficent to convince me that a detour was called for.

So instead we walked on to the delightful village of Langthwaite and from there up a steep, single track road to Booze. With no G&T in sight, despite the name, we managed coffee from a flask instead before we encountered our next impediment. Yes, the footpath ahead was closed due to severe erosion again caused by the flood water.

For a moment I was ready to admit that circumstances were clearly unfavourable, the planets out of alignment or whatever, but it was such a beautiful day that we hastily identified another detour. We finally made it to the moorland top and the Moresdale Road (a rough track across the high moor) with the help of a handheld GPS, OS map and Silva compass, albeit after gingerly stepping across bog and some neat hand and foot work over stones. Up there we had the world to ourselves but it was well into the afternoon when we spotted our destination below us across the heather that was completely obliterating the footpath shown on the map.

Once again, I was almost ready to comfort myself with a view from above but you don't walk all that way only to ignore the star attraction. So we set off across country again (trekking poles do actually have their uses), descending into a small valley where two becks meet and the home, where my great, great, great, grandmother was born in 1799 and lived as a child with her parents, still survives. The public footpath runs right through the farm itself and although there was a sign on the gate requesting that we keep our distance because of the virus, it didn't sound as though the present occupants were going to be totally unfriendly. In fact the black labrador that ran to greet us was clearly delighted to have strangers pat him and his owner too was most welcoming, taking us round the back of the property to see where there had been no renovations to the original barn with accommodation above. Although clearly the house itself had been extended and modernised, the design was very much in line with Dales' farm buildings of the 1700 -1800's, forming an L shape with a courtyard behind. 

Happy to answer our questions and impart more information than we requested, the owner also advised that until 1963, the property's only source of electricity had been from a water wheel in the beck providing power for one socket only.

Still if life had been tough in the 1960's, it is hard to imagine just how much tougher it must have been 160 years before that. However, the setting itself on a sunny day was idyllic with the hills around the farm providing its own mini micro-climate, safe from the breeze that had accompanied us on our stroll.

I would like to say that it was all downhill from there but we had to climb back up to the moor, passing the adjacent farm hanging to the side of the hill where that same grandmother lived once she was married. 

A circuitous route took us past Schoolmaster Pasture (I love that name) back to Langthwaite passing through Hurst with the chimneys from its leadmining heyday and along Fremington Edge. We did finally get back; the last people to descend from the moor to pick up our car that day although the last mile or two were seriously painful as I surely wore holes in the soles of my feet. 

Moving yesterday wasn't easy until I'd completed my daily Pilates stretching, but believe me it was worth it. Now I just have to find a few more relatives to visit in order to plan another day out.