1936 On the Continent

, a spa of natural waters.
    Here are good hotels. In one there is the grand Christmas frolic when, for a night, guests and household staff change places! Great good fun, but you have to book your rooms ahead for that laughter.
    It is worth staying to tour the district. It is very wooded and wild. The road reaches an altitude of 1,000 feet, and the gradients are steep.
Snowed Up in England
    As a suggestion, head for L EEK , the market town of the district, and find Flash. Three aeroplanes couldn’t find Flash, one winter when it got snowed up; it’s in such a pocket in the hills that no one could get there, and the wires broke down. And the saying goes, “They were eating the last flitch of bacon from under the innkeeper’sbed” when the thaw came; but another authority said this was erroneous—“they’d still got the parson’s chickens to fall back upon,” and somebody “had a pie laid down.” But that’s a sample of the country and the weather! Probably that’s why Bakewell is noted for its puddings.
    Kinderscout (2,088 feet) is the centre of a huge mass of moorlands, and the Snake Inn lies lonely on a mountain road which sweeps down to Glossop.
The Clogs and Shawls of the Cold North
    Coming down Glossop Hill, you come down into the north country: for the women are “hearth-stoning” the steps, and you’ll see the first shawls and clogs of the north.
    Part of Dovedale is probably to be a National Park, and the Dove Holes and Chatsworth Park and many other beauties of the Peak last you to Grindleford, if you go through Sheffield way.
    But from Glossop you can go direct to Huddersfield, through Dunford Bridge and Holmfirth, the road running over open moorland.
Black Country
    Huddersfield is the “black country,” and you’ll have to grin and bear the ugliness to Keighley.
    Then you are in my own home country, and shall go a road that takes you to the most beautiful places in the world.
    From Keighley turn right to I LKLEY , and if you like to go on “Ilkla moor baht ’at” leave the car and away with you on foot. Then go to B OLTON A BBEY and walk through the woods up to the Strid, and then on to Barden Tower and Burnsall. Anywhere there you may leave the road and drive the small winding hill roads, for you are in the heart of the Dales.
A Fine Country for Walkers
    If you can make a detour on foot, drive up the long winding valley past G RASSINGTON and K ILSEY to Star-bottom; then the walkers climb left, up over the hills and moors—a most glorious lime-stone country—and come down on a little rough mountain track that bringsthem out at the foot of Gordale Scarr, and on to Malham Cove, where they may meet the motorist again.
    When I first knew M ALHAM it was only a tiny grey-stone farm and a couple of grey-stone inns, and miles and miles of grey-green grass and grey-white limestone, and the singing trout-beck. Now there are hotels, but the place is not spoilt, and I would advise it as a centre for the Dales. For there is Malham Cove—the mighty limestone cliff down which Little Tom in Kingsley’s
Water Babies
climbed when he ran away over Hearth Over Fell and left his black marks all down the front of that white limestone cliff!
Underground Rivers and Caves
    Read
Water Babies
before you visit this part of the country. Read the first chapter, anyhow, for it describes the giant limestone steps and the heather and the hot sun overhead, and the hidden water holes far, far below.
    From the foot of Gordale Scarr slides out a little stream. It has come, ice cold, through deep caverns underground, and it runs out very quietly, as if awed; and then, a little way through the green fields under the silver birches, it begins to talk, and chatters and babbles for miles. And you can walk beside it all the way.
Still Made as in the Days of Froissart
    Skipton Castle is worth seeing, if only for the mighty gate-house; and in a tiny northern yard—“Hard-by-the-Castle” yard (Hardcastle Yard)—you will find a man making oat-cake, “Haver” oat-cake, exactly like John of Hainault’s soldiers taught the Yorkshire people to make it in the days of Froissart.
    I should like you, if the weather is fine, to make the pass from Wharfedale to Wensley Dale, through Horsehouses, but take advice before starting as it’s a very rough mountain road. Wensley Dale is where the cheese comes from.
    B UCKDEN , Kidstones Pass, to Aysgarth is perhaps the most beautiful stretch of the way. (How I hope you have good weather