From peaceful villages nestling below limestone escarpments to mysterious caves, flower-studded meadows and sparkling waterfalls, the Yorkshire Dales National Park offers the perfect three-day spring escape, says Mark Sutcliffe
DISCOVER
Spring comes slowly to the lonely uplands of the Yorkshire Dales and a curlew – one of the season’s earliest harbingers – is eyeing me with suspicion from his perch atop a drystone wall.
His chicks are yet to hatch, but he isn’t going to let me get any closer to the nest without kicking up a fuss. Launching himself into the cool air, he sounds the alarm – a shrill, bubbling ululation which is a constant refrain amid the upland soundscape. In the valley below, daffodils gild the edge of the village green and leafburst is just a few warm days away. Welcome to Crummackdale – nestling in the shadow of the recumbent lion of Ingleborough – one of the least known dales and a stronghold of that icon of the fells, the curlew.
This maze of interlacing valleys was carved by repeated periods of glacial activity over the last 500,000 years, when retreating ice sheets scoured deep fissures in the limestone, leaving upland plateaus of peat punctuated by terraced escarpments, such as Ingleborough and Pen-y-ghent – two of the famous Yorkshire Three Peaks. Stepping back still further in time, the limestone that is such an elemental feature of the dales was laid down some 350 million years ago.
Variations in the durability of this porous sedimentary rock produced the complex landforms we see today, characterised by precipitous cliffs with vast networks of interconnected caverns below the surface.
The word ‘dale’ derives from the ancient Germanic word ‘dal’ meaning valley. Depending on how you define them, the limestone landscapes of Yorkshire are riven by as many as 40 separate river valleys, but most of the locals agree that there are 10 ‘official’ dales. This three-day tour explores five of the most beautiful – Ribblesdale, Malhamdale, Swaledale, Wensleydale and Wharfedale – with detours into lesser-known Crummackdale, Littondale and Ravenstonedale.
Before the advent of the car, travelling over the ‘tops’ between the valleys was a tough and potentially dangerous undertaking, so over the centuries, each individual dale evolved its own distinct character, from the verdant mea
