Doing the Dales

In the last boating post, we mentioned a breach we were hoping would be fixed. Well – it is fixed. So we have moved on into the Yorkshire Dales. We made it to Gargrave and moored up there for a couple of weeks. The Yorkshire Dales are stunning, and as we had the car for a week, we went off exploring a little further afield to Malhamdale.

Malham Cove is 260ft (80m) high natural amphitheatre, the waterfall has been dry for over two hundred years, except… except for on Heather’s birthday in 2015, when an exceptional amount of rainfall caused the water to flow again. For one day only, this waterfall was the highest in England and higher than Niagara Falls.

Above the cove is the iconic limestone pavement which appears in the Harry Potter film, The Deathly Hallows Part 1, and features in the 1992 film version of Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights and Steve Coogan’s The Trip. Ian remembers it from his geography classes and identifying the clints (limestone slabs) and grykes (fissures between the slabs), that lesson was bound to come in useful one day!!

I think Ian has also developed a 6th sense for wild swimming spots. He swam at Janet’s Foss, a “secret” waterfall, on the walk back from Malham Cove. Not so secret though, it’s on all the maps. He had an audience and he wasn’t the only one taking a dip either. No one was staying in the pool for very long as it was colder than the North Sea (according to Mr B). Be warned if you ever choose to visit, there are tales of Janet, Queen of the Fairies, appearing as a glowing green column of mist that shape shifts above the water mesmerising the viewer with her beauty and then scaring them with visions.
Malham itself is a tiny little village described as the “honeypot” of the Yorkshire Dales with less than 240 inhabitants, it gets overrun by more than 110,000 tourists each year (guilty). It’s a sleepy place, nestled in the most beautiful valley but it has one mystery. In 2006, during a routine electrical safety check of the village hall, an electrician found a listening device (bug) hidden in a 13-amp socket. It had a range of several hundred metres and there was much speculation as to just what the listener was trying to hear. Was it the secrets of the parish council meetings? Or the gossip of the local WI? No one knows. The bug was handed over to the police for investigation!

Cruising on towards Skipton, the views across the valleys are simply stunning. A couple of days in Skipton gave Ian the chance to find Skipton Castle Woods. It’s a short walk from the canal basin along the Springs Branch Canal and past the castle. This is an ancient woodland that helped to power Skipton’s industrial revolution in the 1700’s. Two dams were built to supply water for the new local cotton and wool mills, whilst timber and stone were removed to help build them. The meandering footpaths and sculptures make it another little gem if you’re ever in the area.

We’re planning on spending quite a while on this next stretch of canal, cruising between Skipton and Bingley. These views are not to be rushed, and neither are the swing bridges! We are a bit flabbergasted that there’s twenty-one of them in just 12 ½ miles, all of them need either an anti-vandal key or a Watermate key to operate. Once unlocked, the majority are manual and accommodate farmer’s tracks or footpaths, but if it’s a road bridge then it’s usually electric. However, I’ve now been caught out a couple of times by what some boaters are calling a hybrid bridge. That’s when there’s an electric control panel to lower barriers and release the bridge from its mechanism but then you need to push it open manually (yes, I’m the one who has stood there waiting for the bridge to open itself). Every day is a learning day and these canals are keeping me on my toes!