Swaledales heading for Dufton A bough of new leaves with last summer’s cherries against a sandstone wall. A flock of Swaledales trots into Dufton as we head east for the Pennine Way and High Cup Nick. Through limestone country, an area of shakeholes and limekilns. Time to consider how geology determines hydrology and what lichens appear on rock. Strands Beck, the only beck named on the OS map, surface water pouring down from Hannah's Well where there’s a shift in geology.
Anticipation is high. The grand reveal will come slowly as we climb.
Anticipation is high. The grand reveal will come slowly as we climb.
The dramatic chasm of the glaciated valley opens up before us. The Whin Sill exposure, blue-grey columnar dolerite in pillars and outcropping rock. Magma did not reach the surface but spread in sheets and layers between carboniferous limestones and weathering has slowly exposed it. Terraces of dolerite with blue-grey screes falling in a buttress down to High Cup Gill.
As we approach the head of the chasm, at High Cup Nick, we hear red grouse from the heather moorland of low fells surrounding High Cup Plain- the watershed. To the west, High Cup Gill is a tributary of the River Eden, to the east Teesdale with more dramatic Whin Sill geology outcropping at High Force.
As we approach the head of the chasm, at High Cup Nick, we hear red grouse from the heather moorland of low fells surrounding High Cup Plain- the watershed. To the west, High Cup Gill is a tributary of the River Eden, to the east Teesdale with more dramatic Whin Sill geology outcropping at High Force.
We head south below the terrace of High Cup Scar, through shake holes and rafts of rock rubble, looking back toward High Cup Nick and across the chasm to the hydrology of the northern flank of the valley.
Pure pastoral along our quiet road back to Dufton. Willow catkins and tree flowers. Mangel wursels in heaps, fodder for nursing ewes with bleating lambs. And all the way the mellifluous song of curlew. A cadence of curlew as they rise from boggy pastures, weaving over us in flight. On HIgh Cup Nick there was a hint of larksong, distant and muffled by a stiff wind.
At Appleby-in-Westmorland we visit the almshouses known as St Anne's Hospital. In 1650 Lady Anne Clifford headed north to claim her Yorkshire and Westmorland estates. To embark on a restoration programme for the five castles: Appleby, Brough, Brougham, Pendragon and Skipton. Set back off Boroughgate there is an enclosed courtyard of small dwellings and a chapel which looks out onto the fells ' an oasis of calm in a troubled world.' Architecture of rosy sandstones. 1650, Lady Anne acquired the land for her almshouses, in troubled times after the execution of Charles 1st. She was staunch in support of Church and King,
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