CTE on a wet November afternoon we met half a dozen farmers leading saddled ponies down the road at the head of Dent, As we passed them, an express train with lighted windows rushed into sight three or four hundred yards up on the hillside; the train had just emerged from Blea Moor Tunnel and crossed Dent Head Viaduct on the way to Carlisle. Down below the men might have been returning from a horse or sheep fair of a hundred years ago, but instead they and their ponies had been out with a shooting party on the moors. None the less, as so often happens in the dale, the old and the new seemed for a few seconds to draw very close.Places to visit in the Lake District
The small secluded valley of Dent is approached at its foot from Sedbergh, or at its head from Widdale and Ribblesdale, or over narrow roads through Deepdale and Barbondale. Dent, besides being the name of the one village, describes the whole dale; Dent dale is a modern term not used by the inhabitants. We shall distinguish between the two by using the old name, Dent Town, for the village. As old people will tell you, Dent is ten miles long by five miles wide; but only where the one branch dale, Deepdale, strikes off south does it measure as much as five miles from hilltop to hilltop. The valley itself varies from half a mile to a mile in width.
Dent begins as a little narrow dale amongst vast treeless wastes of moorland, and taking a bend westwards opens out into a trough of fertile country scored by a multitude of wooded gills and backed by Great Coum, Crag Hill, and Barkin and Holme Fells. Patterned with walls, dotted with farmhouses, and with the one village, Dent Town, in its midst, it looks, as was said of it long ago, 'a terrestrial paradise.'
Dent, like Garsdale, from which it is divided by Rise Hill, lies on the west side of the Pennines; the waters of its river, the Dee, flow eventually into the Irish Sea. The climate is milder and the rainfall higher than in the dales on the east. In fact, the dale is situated at a comparatively low altitude. Dent Town is 480 feet above sea level. We live at Askrigg in mid Wensleydale at 800 feet. Its connections, too, are with Lancashire and Westmorland rather than with Yorkshire; the architecture of its farmhouses and the banks topped by hedges for field boundaries resemble those in Westmorland; and even the Women's Institute belongs to the federation of that county.
Below Dent Town the valley narrows; its floor is flat, and the hills, instead of following the smooth lines of the dale hills, appear gnarled and humpy like the fells of the Lake District. At this point alongside Barkin Beck the Dent Fault crosses the dale. On one side of it lies the familiar limestone country, but on the other, west of the fault, the Silurian Rock of the Lake District is found: the change is striking. At this end of the dale approach must have been difficult before the flat swampy valley floor was drained. Indeed, tradition relates that Scots raiders never found Dent. But most of all the traveller is struck by the number of small whitewashed farmhouses, each with a porch, spaced along the sides of the valley. Sometimes ruins of old houses adjoin them. A few are unoccupied, and some, now turned into barns, were once houses. Rather than striking architectural featuresonly three or four have dated doorheads they have a rustic charm that is enhanced by their names: Helks, Coventree, Dockle Syke, Hollin Bush, Rivling, Greenwell, Butterpots.
The small secluded valley of Dent is approached at its foot from Sedbergh, or at its head from Widdale and Ribblesdale, or over narrow roads through Deepdale and Barbondale. Dent, besides being the name of the one village, describes the whole dale; Dent dale is a modern term not used by the inhabitants. We shall distinguish between the two by using the old name, Dent Town, for the village. As old people will tell you, Dent is ten miles long by five miles wide; but only where the one branch dale, Deepdale, strikes off south does it measure as much as five miles from hilltop to hilltop. The valley itself varies from half a mile to a mile in width.
Dent begins as a little narrow dale amongst vast treeless wastes of moorland, and taking a bend westwards opens out into a trough of fertile country scored by a multitude of wooded gills and backed by Great Coum, Crag Hill, and Barkin and Holme Fells. Patterned with walls, dotted with farmhouses, and with the one village, Dent Town, in its midst, it looks, as was said of it long ago, 'a terrestrial paradise.'
Dent, like Garsdale, from which it is divided by Rise Hill, lies on the west side of the Pennines; the waters of its river, the Dee, flow eventually into the Irish Sea. The climate is milder and the rainfall higher than in the dales on the east. In fact, the dale is situated at a comparatively low altitude. Dent Town is 480 feet above sea level. We live at Askrigg in mid Wensleydale at 800 feet. Its connections, too, are with Lancashire and Westmorland rather than with Yorkshire; the architecture of its farmhouses and the banks topped by hedges for field boundaries resemble those in Westmorland; and even the Women's Institute belongs to the federation of that county.
Below Dent Town the valley narrows; its floor is flat, and the hills, instead of following the smooth lines of the dale hills, appear gnarled and humpy like the fells of the Lake District. At this point alongside Barkin Beck the Dent Fault crosses the dale. On one side of it lies the familiar limestone country, but on the other, west of the fault, the Silurian Rock of the Lake District is found: the change is striking. At this end of the dale approach must have been difficult before the flat swampy valley floor was drained. Indeed, tradition relates that Scots raiders never found Dent. But most of all the traveller is struck by the number of small whitewashed farmhouses, each with a porch, spaced along the sides of the valley. Sometimes ruins of old houses adjoin them. A few are unoccupied, and some, now turned into barns, were once houses. Rather than striking architectural featuresonly three or four have dated doorheads they have a rustic charm that is enhanced by their names: Helks, Coventree, Dockle Syke, Hollin Bush, Rivling, Greenwell, Butterpots.