Day 44: Arkengarthdale

Distance: 15.5 miles
Mudfalls: Dawn, 2; Al, nil

Today we did not pass places called Grouse Butt and Shooting Butt. As Julia, once again our font of English knowledge, pointed out in comments, those aren't real places. They're things: what our people, in the colonies, would call "blinds". We call them blinds because the idea is the birds are blind to your presence when you and your shotgun are hiding out in one. But why do English people call them "Butts"?


We saw lots of these things. One of them seemed to be home to a grouse, two other birds, and a couple of bunnies. Hunting must be very easy in this country.



The past two days we've gone from one dale to the next, which pretty much requires you to go over big hills, often through moors. It's because of the geology of how the dales were formed. What happened is that a few thousand years ago, when the earth was still soft, God reached down and scraped his fingers through North Yorkshire. Each scrape became a dale, and pushed up gunk between the dales: those are the fells that we need to cross. We saw a three-d map at a pub yesterday and it really looked for all the world like this is how it was formed, deep furrows in a plain, and the furrows looked exactly like finger scrapes.


Yesterday we had to go up a big fell, Bucken Pike, because Wharfedale was such a big scrape. Today's fell, which is really named Gibbon Hill, and not Shooting Butt, is not nearly so high. To make up for this, the path goes up twice, first going way up then down to a stream, then way up again. At the stream crossing was this place, which reminded me of the Apsley Holiday Inn (don't bother googling, it's an inside joke: you either get it or you don't).


Once out of the moor, we dropped down into Arkengarthdale, another quiet and beautiful dale. We learned this morning that they used this dale for some shooting in "All Creatures Great and Small".


You can see that Dawn is struggling to get up a hill. It's because I made a mistake. There are two footpaths through the dale: one along Arkle Beck, along the bottom, and the other going up and then running parallel to the river. We took the latter. It went up, high, and it got exceedingly muddy. All the while we could see far below the peaceful path that we'd missed. Oops. The mud was really slippery, and Dawn repeated her slip and fall from yesterday. Twice. This time, I got a picture.


And an after photo, for Larry, that shows some mud on pack and jacket action. I think yesterday Dawn's pack stayed mostly on grass, but today she went down in a sea of mud. She stayed surprisingly clean, especially considering that I dragged her through another couple of feet of mud attempting to help her up.


The weather today was all over the place, like it has been the past few days. As usual, we had both hail and sun while up on the moor. On the way up, we passed Bolton Castle; you can see the threatening weather building behind it.


It wouldn't be a post in this blog without some animal pictures. So, first, here's our friend Crazy Horns.


And two different kinds of animals that are both disguised as Cousin Itt. First, the cow Itt family.


And now the Sheep Itt family. How do these animals see?


Tomorrow we climb out of Arkengarthdale, over Dale Head Common, leaving Yorkshire for County Durham. We'll be sad to see Yorkshire go. Even with the sketchy weather we've had here, North Yorkshire has worked its way up to be tied for our favorite county, neck and neck with Cornwall. We'll be back.

Location:Charles Bathurst Inn, Arkengarthdale, North Yorkshire, UK