Days and dales to remember all our lives

Five years ago, Yvette Huddleston and Walter Swan began contributing a series of pieces to the Yorkshire Post about days out in the Dales. Those features have now inspired a book.

When we first started writing a series of pieces for the Yorkshire Post Magazine five years ago, about the lesser-known dales of Yorkshire, we began a journey of discovery that is continuing to this day.

Both relative newcomers to Yorkshire, having moved up North with our families from southern parts in the late 1990s, we approached our days out from the point of view of people perhaps enjoying the Yorkshire Dales for the first time.

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What has been interesting over the years is that as the hills and valleys have become more familiar to us, the enjoyment of spending time in those beautiful surroundings has not diminished.

Our first day out, in June 2006, was to Coverdale. It’s said of Coverdale that only a Yorkshireman has ever heard of it, and even he doesn’t know how to find it. In fact, it can be found by taking a back road out of Kettlewell in the direction of Middleham. Both villages are, understandably, very popular with tourists.

However, in between, the road through Coverdale is a rarely travelled delight, where sheep feel they have more rights than the occasional motorist who ventures out into this remote stretch of the Dales.

Coverdale was the perfect dale to begin the series – wild, isolated and starkly beautiful, with tiny hamlets populated by hardy farmers and farm workers.

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Our idea for the pieces was to give readers an idea of what there is to see and do when spending a day in a particular Dale – the sights to see, the pubs, cafes, churches, castles, picture-postcard villages, secret waterfalls, museums or other places of interest to visit, as well as giving a little flavour of the history of the area and descriptions of the landscape which, as we came to learn, is quite distinct in each case.

There are also details of where to stay overnight, for those who would like to linger for longer than a day, or where to go walking or cycling if you want to abandon the car for a while.

A feature of our Day in a Dale pieces was encounters with local people living or working in the area, or with visitors, which brought a different perspective to our own impressions. Some of the people we met have become good friends and from many we have learnt a great deal, particularly those people working on the land as farmers, shepherdesses or gamekeepers.

Without exception, all those we met shared our love of the Dales – even when the weather isn’t kind, as has quite often been the case.

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One some days, we started out from our bit of West Yorkshire in wind or rain, never quite knowing what kind of meteorological conditions we would find up in the Dales. Sometimes, we were pleasantly surprised as on one unforgettable trip up to Barbondale in January. We left a grey and cloudy Ilkley and headed up the A65 hoping that the sun might break through. By the time we reached Barbondale, the afternoon light was quite extraordinary – the sunshine was glorious and made for some wonderful warm photographs.

We later discovered that Barbondale is known for its sunlight but it felt like a privilege to be able to witness it first hand.

Over a period of five years, we have explored in the region of 25 dales, including Bishopdale, Raydale, Deepdale, Kingsdale, Birkdale, Cotterdale, Arkengarthdale, Garsdale, Grisedale, Apedale and many more.

The majority of the dales through which we have travelled lie within the boundaries of the Yorkshire Dales National Park, although we have also visited three dales that lie outside these boundaries, namely Barbondale, Lothersdale and Nidderdale.

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Almost are accessible by car but one of our most memorable outings was through Whitsundale – described by Wainwright as one of Yorkshire’s most remote places – where we followed one of the Coast to Coast routes past the famous Nine Standards on the Cumbrian border, through boggy terrain and sublime but desolate countryside, ending up with a cream tea at Ravenseat Farm.

Luckily, there are plenty more dales waiting to be discovered – located in the North Yorkshire Moors and in the Wolds, by the end of which we will almost certainly feel ready to start revisiting the dales we have grown to love over the past five years.

A Day in a Dale, £18.99, is published by Scratching Shed Publishing. It is available online and in bookshops now. www.scratchingshedpublishing.co.uk. Some of the characters in ITV1’s new series, The Dales, appear in the book. A fact file at the end of each chapter lists useful contact details.