THIS is a typical village of the dales, with its simple square-towered church and its greeny-grey roofs. The hill on the left is Kisdon, and one is looking up the narrowest portion of Swaledale.]
bridge and a rushing mountain stream that joins the Swale just below. The road keeps close to this beck, and the houses are thus restricted to one side of the way. There is a bright and cheerful appearance about the Farmers’ Arms, the small inn that stands back a little from the road with a cobbled space in front. Inside you may find a grandfather clock by Pratt of Askrigg in Wensleydale, a portrait of Lord Kitchener, and a good square meal of the ham and eggs and tea order.
Away to the south, in the direction of the Buttertubs Pass, is Stags Fell, 2,213 feet above the sea, and something like 1,300 feet above Muker. Northwards, and towering over the village, is the isolated mass of Kisdon Hill, on two sides of which the Swale, now a mountain stream, rushes and boils among boulders and ledges of rock. This is one of the finest portions of the dale, and, although the road leaves the river and passes round the western side of Kisdon, there is a path that goes through the glen, and brings one to the road again at Keld.
Just before you reach Keld, the Swale drops 30 feet at Kisdon Force, and after a night of rain there are many other waterfalls to be seen in this district. These are not to me, however, the chief attractions of the head of Swaledale, although without the angry waters the gills and narrow ravines that open from the dale would lose much interest. It is the stern grandeur of the scarred hillsides and the wide mountainous views from the heights that give this part of Yorkshire such a fascination. If you climb to the top of Rogan’s Seat, you have a huge panorama of desolate country spread out before you. The confused jumble of blue-gray mountains to the north-west is beyond the limits of Yorkshire at last, and in their strong embrace those stern Westmoreland hills hold the charms of Lakeland. Down below is the hamlet of Keld, perched in an almost Swiss fashion on a sharply-falling hillside, and among the surrounding masses of heaving moor are the birthplaces of the dozen becks that supply the headwaters of the Swale. These nearer hills, which include High Seat and the Lady’s Pillar, form the watershed of this part of the Yorkshire border; for on the western slopes are to be found the sources of the river Eden that flows through the beautiful valley, which is one of the greatest charms of the Midland route to Scotland.