Tag: Ribblesdale

An eye on the past in Ribblesdale

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Stare for long enough at my photo of the Hoffmann Kiln at Langcliffe in Ribblesdale and you’ll see an enormous eye looking back at you… or maybe it’s just me being over-imaginative who can see it! This is a rare building, a remnant of Craven’s industrial past when lime used to be burnt here. The kiln, named after the German who invented it, has stood since 1873. Most tourists drive straight past unaware of its presence just off the road to the Three Peaks. It closed in the 1930s. There was a tall chimney here once but strangely, just as it was due to be demolished in 1951, it fell down on its own accord, the day before the planned ceremony, when there was no one around.There’s no charge for looking around the kiln so I’m surprised more Yorkshire folk don’t visit.

Another top free show in the Dales

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Last night’s weather show in north Ribblesdale was brilliant. I sat as near to the end of a rainbow you can get, watched mighty clouds marching rapidly across the sky changing the scenery by the minute. From beneath the arches of Ribblehead Viaduct I saw a fine sunset. In Kingsdale I witnessed shafts of sunlight light up first the western slopes of Whernside then like a great theatre spotlight switch across the valley to Ingleborough. I got so giddy I took eighty photos – thank goodness for digital cameras. The top one shows the sunset from underneath the viaduct, with the flat top of Ingleborough on the left; the other shows the light on the viaduct a couple of moments before the sunset. Keep looking here for more pictures (not compulsory – just a suggestion.)

Shades of grey in the Dales

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Someone chucked a huge grey blanket over north Ribblesdale today. The forecasters promised so much – surely they can’t be that wrong? I got into my grey car, caught the reflection of my grey hair in the window, and headed off into the gloom searching for inspiration…. “T’blog weean’t write itssen,” I thought, in my best West Riding twang. I was momentarily transported back some forty years to my earliest days in weekly newspapers when on a Monday morning the grumpy editor would poke his head around the reporters’ room door and bark something about there being “God knows how many column-inches to fill” and that they wouldn’t be filled by reporters sitting on their backsides in the office. Those were days before lifting stuff from  t’internet and readers with mobile phones helped filled the space – reporters were paid to go out into the streets, courts and – all in the line of duty – pubs to seek out the local tittle-tattle. Back to today. Someone stealing the Three Peaks would have made a good tale for the newspaper… they were definitely missing on my journey to Ribblehead Viaduct where even the tea wagon hadn’t bothered to turn up. Limestone grey walls and limestone grey buildings against a grey backdrop. Even the sheep looked grey. The National Park won’t allow anyone to use their imagination and paint something bright red by way of a change; I’m surprised they allow cyclists to ride on the roads wearing those luminous tops. I love seeing bright red post boxes and telephone kiosks dotted around the Dales, but try making your garden gate the same colour and some jobsworth or a haughty neighbour will be on your case before the paint’s dry. Anyway, back once more to today. Anyone who’s lived in the area will tell you that there are times when it seems every dale has its own weather system and so it proved on this little adventure. Dropping into Wensleydale was like waking from a coma… there was blue sky, fluffy clouds, tourists in T-shirts and alfresco drinkers on the setts by the Black Bull. I walked along to Cotter Force where bright red rowan berries (are they allowed in the National Park?) added some extra pizzazz to a beautiful rural scene. High on Buttertubs Pass, peering down on upper Swaledale (pictured), everything became crisper and clearer; the contrast with dowdy Ribblesdale could not have been greater. Perhaps it will be Ribblesdale’s day tomorrow.

Another day in the Dales

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I know it’s not that unusual but I watched the sun rise this morning and set again tonight. With more than a tinge of envy I took two friends to Manchester airport for one of those ridiculous ungodly boarding times and waved them off to Cuba. Never mind, I thought, I’ve still got my bit of Yorkshire. In the evening I watched a couple of hang gliders (or should that be gliderers, or maybe glidists?) floating effortlessly above Victoria Cave near Langcliffe, then I witnessed a glorious sunset. By messing about with the camera settings (I MUST read the instruction book one day or go on a course) I captured this shot over Ribblesdale which I rather like for some reason. Who needs foreign lands anyway?

Clouded vision over the dale

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Watching the clouds over Ribblesdale last night – yes, I know… Saturday night… get a life Jackson – was like seeing a drama unfold. To the east (above) a cloud was forming into some kind of enormous alien spaceship. It was moving quickly and gobbling up all the light blue sky before it. To the west (below) were layers of different, overlapping clouds. The sun was setting and rays of light kept coming and going, creating patterns in the sky and on the landscape. Hard to believe these two photos were taken less than ten minutes apart. A great display and far more entertaining than all that guff on Saturday night TV.

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The battle of Ribblesdale

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My blog will have to wait. So here’s a pretty picture of Ribblesdale instead. You see, I was trying to work at the computer but was being distracted by a particularly annoying bluebottle that was purposely dive-bombing me. It did several fly-pasts before landing on the keyboard just millimetres from my hand. I swished at it but only knocked my cup which splashed tea over some abandoned paperwork. The bluebottle saw my feeble swatting attempt as a challenge and it fizzed around my desk with renewed enthusiasm. By now I’d totally lost the thread of what I was writing. I looked at the cat who in his youth would have been at my side fighting such battles but today he half-heartedly tried to scratch his chin with one of his back paws before sighing and curling up in a contented ball. The stupid bluebottle continued its frenzied attack which I was starting to take very personally. I stomped off for the fly spray and like some crazed 1930s gangster in a bar with a machine gun I splattered the room. In my frenzy, screen, windows, lamps – you name it – got coated in the vile-smelling chemical, so much so that I feared my attack would prompt an American airstrike. The startled cat sneezed and ran out of the room. The bluebottle eventually spiralled to the floor like a broken world war two bomber, offered a few defiant shakes of the legs then expired. For a split second I felt a tinge of guilt – what if it had family? I could hardly breath because of the killer spray so I opened the window… and within a minute a wasp flew in.

Fabulous sunset in Ribblesdale tonight

Sunset in Ribblesdale. No words needed…

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Shush please, I'm in the Dales

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Sunset is a great time for a quiet stroll in Ribblesdale. The light plays tricks. Limestone changes colour in the sun’s weak rays. Erratic rocks like this one take on unlikely silhouettes. I watch a hare dance alone around a freshly cut field. Sheep take no notice, grazing monotonously as they’d been doing all day long. No birdsong. No traffic. No telephone ringing. No tiresome beep from the computer announcing the arrival of yet another tedious email. Just pleasurable peace in the pastoral perfection of the Dales. Ahhh.

Reserved for the best in the Dales

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I walked a bit of the Ingleborough National Nature Reserve Ridge Walk today – the section above Selside overlooking north Ribblesdale. This small tortoiseshell butterfly was kind enough to pose on a thistle for the camera. The shot below shows the butterfly’s extensive view towards Penyghent. I wonder how far butterflies can see?

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Lovely sisters of the Dales

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Driving through Swaledale this morning I doubted there was a better place I could possibly be. I travelled up Ribblesdale, in amongst the Three Peaks, before heading over Buttertubs Pass and negotiating my way around sheep that had serious suicidal tendencies (they were sunbathing in the middle of the road). Almost got run over myself while taking some photos of the meadows near Gunnerside (shame the Kings pub has now closed). Then, in sharp contrast to the neatly walled enclosures of the dale, it was over the wild open heather moorland to Redmire in Wensleydale and back home via Bolton Castle and Hawes. Yorkshire writer Alfred J Brown (1894-1969) once wrote: ‘One of the charms of the Yorkshire Dales is that they are all characteristically different, like lovely sisters of the same family.’ Nicely put.