Читать книгу Walking in the Yorkshire Dales: South and West. Wharfedale, Littondale, Malhamdale, Dentdale and Ribblesdale онлайн

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From the Cavendish Pavilion car park, cross the River Wharfe on the bridge in front of the café and follow the riverbank upstream. When you reach a gate, climb a zigzag path to the lane above. Turn left, but after 250m, leave through a gate on the right beside Waterfall Cottage. A track rises above Posforth Gill for 800m, eventually arriving at a marshy pond where you have your first view into the valley below. Branch left off the main track there, down to a footbridge nestling in the base of the valley.

The River Wharfe below Posforth Bridge

VALLEY OF DESOLATION

The Valley of Desolation is now a hardly fitting title for this charming glen. But in 1826 flash floods from a heavy deluge transformed the babbling beck into a raging torrent. It swept down the valley stripping bare the vegetation and uprooting massive trees to leave behind a naked gash cleaving the hillside. Now, apart from the odd ancient rotting stump, only the name gives any hint of its past devastation. More recently, nature has been given a hand, with the planting of some 8000 trees in a scheme to illustrate how the area might have been colonised by a succession of different types of vegetation in the 12,000 years since the last ice age.