In the meantime these are some photos from a recent guided walk. I don’t have a great deal of images from these walks as I can get a bit snap-happy once I start, which isn’t conducive to productive leadership, but here are some from a smashing day out on the Muker-Keld-Swinner Gill walk. It’s one of my favourites in the Dales, a landscape full of rugged rockiness and an overwhelming feeling of desolation only enhanced by the now-deserted remains of its human interactions in a previous life. A fair amount of water in the becks prevented our little excursion to Swinner Gill Kirk (a hidden waterfall and cave with a little story all of their own…) but we did extend the route instead a little further up Swinner Gill itself and had a great day. As a bonus, the iconic wildflower meadows were just starting to really come into their own as they welcomed us back to Muker at the end.
It’s a special area for me as my family - prior to leaving Swaledale around 100 years ago with the lead mining, for Nidderdale where we’ve been ever since - once lived in the small cottage attached to the Farmer’s Arms in Muker. There’s a few of my ancestors in the churchyard, and indeed you can visit Harkerside itself - a whole section of Swaledale preserving the name's Norse origins many, many more generations ago.