The soft water, clean air, quietness and lack of light pollution in Yorkshire was good for my skin and I slept better. One lunchtime it was too hot to eat outside; unusual in Swaledale and the farmers were out in force tedding, windrowing and baling; making hay while the sun shone.
There is another, the third I saw, Literary Institute in Gunnerside. The fine clock is a recent addition to mark the millennium.
For the first time we saw and heard curlews, there was a dipper on the Swale and rabbits are succumbing to myxomatosis. Many field barns survive as a reminder of how the land used to be farmed. They are two-storey, stone barns where the hay was stored on top and cattle wintered beneath. A convenient hole on the ground floor was where the shit was shovelled out and later spread as manure.
We didn’t see red squirrels but they are coming back. We did see road signs, “Caution! Red Squirrels”. It reminds me of my cousin going to watch badgers at night. She didn’t see any but ran one over on the way home.
