From out of the Past (Part two)

Post:    I particularly like Charlie’s depiction of this old pack horse bridge to be found on the rarely used Foxup Moor crossing track.   His detailing of the stonework takes some drawing and didn’t he do well.  I first crossed this little bridge in the early 1950’s on a clubrun, and quite often repeated the run because it was perfect in every respect – a track that you could ride, almost always deserted and that delightful little bridge to enjoy.  Was I lucky or was I lucky ?

From Foxup, at the far end of Littondale, a track goes through a long depression below Pen-y-Ghent and ultimately emerges at Horton-in-Ribblesdale.  Littondale is not well known except to that increasing sect that travels map in hand, searching out unspoiled bits of Britain.  Motorists sometimes stray into Littondale, mostly by mistake because, as they speed up Wharfedale towards Kettlewell, Littondale opens promisingly on the left with a promising road quite as good as the Wharfedale highway for four twisty miles to Arncliffe.  Arncliffe is grey and solid and satisfying to these strayers, and so to them this typical dale-village becomes the end of Littondale.  Some, more venturesome, might cross the Litton by the old bridge and discover delight in the wilder reaches, following a narrow but quite decent road to Halton Gill, which appears first a mile away like a Swiss village clinging for dear life to the steep hillside.  There they turn back unless they have sufficient incentive and a good reserve of power to tackle the dusty byway that corkscrews into Silverdale, then makes their brakes give burdened groans down into Stainforth.

For he who dotes on those double-lines or trails of dots that exemplify the Ordnance Survey and Bartholomew, Littondale becomes a paradise.  He may be lured by the white bit of a road that leaps up a ravine from Arncliffe and strides over lonely places to Malham Tarn.  He may cross the pebbly river from Litton and find the green springing lane restful to his feet and Pen-y-Ghent across the Gill good to his eyes, until he reaches Silverdale Road.  If strenuous is his mood he might chance his strength on the zig-zag track above Halton Gill that takes him 2000 ft over Horsehead Pass to Raisgill in Langstrothdale.  Or he might search out the long-lost trail the ancients used to take them round the back of Pen-y-Ghent to Horton.

I travelled up Littondale on the fourth day of an Easter tour.  Where had been three of us at Kilnsey for lunch; but my two companions had already stayed on a little too long, and had bade me a hurried goodbye, heading westward into a great throng of homeward-bounds.  The day was sunny: Easter Monday on the highways is not a day of restfulness…… and I was free for another day.  My mood demanded peace, so I turned into Littondale.  My fancy was for the white lane that leaps over the fells to Malham, but I passed it by and formed new fancies as I crossed the bridge from Arncliffe.  At Litton I remembered the springing turf of the track to Silverdale road, but again I passed on, and passed the dusty by-lane that presses under Pen-y-Ghent.  At Halton Gill I hesitated; the Horsehead track was tantalising, and cool breezes were up there – the other side held lovely Oughtershaw and the head of Wharfedale in its moorland grip.  Yet again I passed on, along a rough lane to tiny Foxup, the last attempt at clustering humans have made in Littondale.  There the valley closes, is trapped by dark fellsides.  I would have to find that fabled path across to Horton-in-Ribblesdale.

The Path the ancients trod001

 

A first attempt along a cartway close by the beck failed where it reached finality at a farm.  The farmer sent me through a gate, up the grassy hillside, through another gate into a sheep pen, from which I emerged by another gate to the open fellside, high above the hamlet.   He had promised a track there, a faintly pressed trail, but had expressed doubt that I should get to Ribblesdale by nightfall.  “You will miss the track”, he had said: “but keep the gates in sight”.  Drowsiness lay on the moors that afternoon, for I missed the curlews and the grouse: the sheep strayed away without a sound, the sun had taken on an aura, and was sinking, and the becks were low-voiced.  They murmured.  No-one came: with an even stride I passed from gate to gate without trouble, for the turf was smooth to the feet, and the gates themselves were fairly new.

They even swung, had real catches to them.  My mood was tranquillity.  The track had a slight upward trend so that each wall and its gate made the skyline.  On the left a perfect upward curve in the land suddenly lost its symmetry to form the semi-sheer flank of Pen-y-Ghent, and on the right the narrow end of Littondale was shallowing rapidly to meet the ridge.  A higher ridge was behind.  For an hour I walked where I might easily have ridden, but I never gave riding a thought.  It did not seem quite the thing, someway.  Then a limestone gully crossed the path and looking up along it I realised that Pen-y-Ghent stood just above, aloof, with worn-in scars of many a waterway striking parallel lines down it.  Just after that I passed below a little line of outcrop crags, and lost the track.  The farmer had spoken truth…… the way the ancients had trod was obliterated.  At the next wall there was no gate, but a great gap through which I passed, and carelessly descended into a great basin, a perfect saucer in the moors.

I am writing as an impressionist now, and my impressions must be faithful or this book is untrue, unfair.  I am speaking truth when I say that my descent into that hollow place on the moors led me to a feeling akin to trepidation.  The place was eerie, as if haunted.  It weighed on me.  The sky had blazed all day, and now it was charged with a coppery heaviness that had smothered the earlier breezes.  Not a sound could I hear, not a living movement could I see; the wandering sheep, with unerring instinct had never tracked this place.  I knew something lay on the bed of that depression that I was confidently beginning to cross, and I reasoned that I, who was strong, had hardly known a moment’s fear in my life.  Why should I now fear a moorland hollow that was deserted and lost to sound or movement ?

I hesitated, pushed on, and hesitated again.  There certainly was something queer here, some brooding moodiness that was getting on my nerves.  The turf underneath was silent as a rubber pad, and sprang under the weight of my feet.  An ideal camp-site, but I shuddered to think of camping in that atmosphere.  As I pushed forward again I became aware of a sound, a faint, hollow murmur that I could not place.  The sound became louder in a few yards, a gurgling, muffled voice that seemed to rise underfoot.  The truth then dawned on me: a stream ran underground a few inches beneath me, it could not be deeper.  I moved forward again, and the sound died away, to be replaced by another, yet another, until the deep-voiced chattering came in on all sides, hollow murmurings from every side and eerie in the almost unnatural solitude.

I could not shake off that uneasy feeling  which had first assailed me, and as I approached the centre of this basin, a new quite natural explanation appeared.  My feet suddenly sank into bog; before I could retard myself I was knee-deep, and it sucked at me with great force.  I tore myself out of it, extricated a shoe just as that necessary piece of footwear was becoming immersed in green, slimy fluid, and back on the turf, surveyed the treacherous expanse.  I ought to have guessed the obvious at the sight of this moorland saucer without outside outlet.  It was a great sink into which drained all the water from the surrounding ridge, and as the limestone underneath, being porous, could not hold the water to form a lake or pool above, there was constant saturation of the surface.  Beneath that central bogland must be a great underground lake or an intricate series of channels to bear the water down to some other outlet.

Obviously it was foolish to attempt to cross there, so I turned sideways, skirting the bog and climbing the ridge.  Over the other side drowsy sheep scattered on my approach, I climbed a wall and dragged the bike after me, then covering a rough heather tract, I regained the track where it showed clearer in a dirty gateway.  Thence the going was boggy and well defined; I was able to reach a stream where I cleaned the mess from my legs by the simple, usual method of paddling while retaining footwear.  Clean wet shoes and stockings are preferable to the discomfort of caked slime !

Over the next ridge I espied a walled clearing and a hut, and descending into the clearing, came upon the great gap of Hull Pot, smooth, grey-walled, gaping to the sky.  Without ropes Hull Pot – over 100 ft deep – is nigh impossible to descend.  From there the wide sweep of Ribblesdale appeared below; on my left a huge ravine blocked by limestone cliffs, each cliff a tremendous step towards the head held a stream of pigmy size.  The track, now a road of sorts, led me down past an isolated shippon where a farmer was engaged.  From him I obtained a ready consent to camp in a lovely little hollow sheltered from the wind, and ere dark brought heavy banks of cloud onto the fells, was comfortably ‘bivvied’, and soliloquising on the crossing from Foxup by the path the ancients trod, and the weird ‘sough’ below Pen-y-Ghent.

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