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

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Field barns are a feature of the Wensleydale pastures (Walk 30)

Despite the steep gradients that act as boundaries between the upper moors and the lowlands, it is often hard to define where the one begins and the other ends. Stroll in rich water meadows beside a serpentine river flowing in a flat-bottomed valley, or stride upon an airy plateau beneath vast, open skies, and there is little doubt where you are. But walk from one to the other and the transition is often quite subtle. In many places, the neatly walled grazing pastures of the lower valleys climb high up the slope, sometimes intermingled with variegated woodlands that soften the craggy steps. In their higher reaches, the valley bottoms can often feel utterly remote from the rest of the world, and have an untamed complexion that is more akin to the uplands. On the wildest of the tops, great morasses of peat hag and bog might stretch for miles, but even here the tendrils of the ubiquitous stone walls are never far away, encompassing bleak tracts of land and signifying a belonging to some farm settlement in the valley far below.