Dales role for festival-display bridge

A DRY-stone bridge which was created as a display at a leading food and drink festival is being given a new lease of life in the Yorkshire Dales.

Members of the Otley and Yorkshire Dales branch of the Dry Stone Walling Association built the bridge to demonstrate their skills to visitors at the Dales Festival of Food and Drink in Leyburn. Now they have decided to donate it to the Yorkshire Dales National Park Authority and rebuild it over Eller Beck at Ballowfield, between Carperby and Woodhall in Wensleydale.

The Wensleydale branch of the Campaign to Protect Rural England (CPRE) is funding the project, which is costing 2,500.

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The national park authority's access ranger for Lower Wensleydale, Paul Sheehan, said: "We are very grateful to the association members for their fantastic gift and to the CPRE for providing the funding.

"It will be welcomed by all the walkers who use the route. At the moment the beck is crossed on a clapper bridge – a series of stones in the water with stone slabs across the top of them.

"Unfortunately it often gets submerged in times of heavy rain, which makes it dangerous."