The Summer Outing 1997

The idea of spending a summer day in upper Nidderdale appealed to 53 members, including our president, Brian Braithwaite-Exley. We travelled by car via Grassington and the breezy heights of Greenhow Hill. The morning was grey and drizzly but Pateley Bridge was floriferous, with some flowers in window boxes and some in pots. None appeared to be at ground level.

At our first call, King Street Craft Workshops, only the glassblowers were active. As the celebrated museum would not be open until afternoon, the party split up for a while, some going to St Cuthbert's a seven-day-a-week church, complete with kitchen and toilets, and others found their way to local cafes. The smell of toasted teacake hung on the morning air.

So to Bewerley Grange Chapel, built when Marmaduke Huby was Abbot of Fountains Abbey (1494-1526) and finally restored in 1965. We crowded into the pews and someone played a harmonium. Thence, by narrow, winding road, to the 19th century Glasshouses Mill to sip and some even to buy traditional fruit wines which are produced in vaulted cellars. The cavalcade of cars reformed and undertook grave business, heading for a cemetery (complete with toilet block for visitors) so high on the hill those buried there must already be well on the way to heaven. We walked through the cemetery to the roofless but otherwise complete old church of St Mary, half hidden by trees. After lunch we reassembled at Foster Beck Mill, Wath, admiring a 35 ft waterwheel which is said to be in working order, though the mill is now a restaurant and no one wants a waterwheel for stirring soup or tea. We passed bird-busy Gouthwaite reservoir, which compensates riparian owners who lost water when the upper dale was dammed for Scar House and Angram reservoirs. At Ramsgill, we were reminded of the long residence in these parts of the Yorke family.

Coins dropped in a machine entitled us to follow a private Yorkshire Water road to a large car park (and toilet block) near the big reservoirs. In chilly conditions, we strode across the dam and back before returning to more temperate Nidderdale. At the Museum, we saw a lively collection illustrating aspects of Dale's life.