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

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Although wool was once an important element of the local economy, that of the hill sheep is now used only for carpet manufacture, and low prices often mean that its value is less than the cost of shearing. The lambs are generally sold on to lowland farms for fattening, with the strong ewes being valued as breeding stock. On the moors, the sheep are ‘heafed’ or ‘hefted’ to the land, an instinct that keeps them within their own territory. The ewes somehow pass this instinct on to their lambs, which makes the job of the farmer immeasurably easier when it comes to rounding up the flock.

The number of sheep is determined by what the grazing can sustain. Too small and the land will become overrun with scrub, but too much will kill off the heather and denude the grass slopes. Maintaining that delicate balance over the centuries has created the open aspect of the countryside that we so value today.

Amongst the cottongrass on the slopes of Dodd Fell Hill (Walk 35)

Long before Wallace and his indefatigable companion, Grommit, revealed their attachment to Wensleydale cheese, dairy farming in the lower dales had been an important element in the local economy. Before the arrival of the railway, milk itself could only be used to supply local demand, but the coming of the railway meant that cheese and butter made on farms could be ‘exported’ for sale in distant towns, even as far away as London. Cheese is still produced in a small factory at Hawes, and although the milk trains no longer run, road tankers make the daily round of farms to supply the bottling and processing plants.