Читать книгу Walking in the Yorkshire Dales: North and East. Howgills, Mallerstang, Swaledale, Wensleydale, Coverdale and Nidderdale онлайн

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Although some walls only date back a couple of hundred years to the Enclosure Acts, a few are truly ancient, and hark back to the time of the first tentative farmers. Together with the tidy villages, compact farmsteads, isolated field barns and sporadic lime kilns, they create a built environment that has a visual harmony completely at one with its setting.

But nothing remains static, not even in a farming landscape, and change is inevitable to meet ever-evolving demands. Arable farming disappeared with the arrival of the railways in the latter part of the 19th century, when fresh food could easily be ‘imported’ from the more productive market garden areas of the country. Dairy farming, beef-cattle and sheep rearing are now the main activities, cattle predominant on the lower farms, with sheep ubiquitous elsewhere.

Out to check the sheep on Grisedale Common (Walk 9)

Indeed, so much do they reflect the character of life in the Dales that the Swaledale sheep has been adopted as the emblem of the national park. It is only such hardy breeds, with thick, dense fleeces, that are able to survive the harsh conditions and poor grazing of the upper fells, and they are generally only brought down for lambing and shearing, or when deep winter snow blankets the sparse vegetation upon which they otherwise manage to survive.