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| Bronze Age stone circle on Burley Moor above Ilkley (Yorkshire’s Stonehenge) |
The
only boats that have been on the move this week have been hire boats, trip
boats and day boats. This is meant to be
the busy season so, despite the canal being practically closed, it’s good to
see these boats on the move. Being as
Skipton is a tourist town it’s not surprising there are so many trip and day
boats and they all seem to be out every day, so business must be good. Day and trip boats aren’t generally insured
to use locks, so they are not affected by the lock closures like hire and
private boaters are.
There
are two hire boat bases in the 20-mile section that is still open so all the
hire boaters can do is cruise backwards and forwards between Bingley and Gargrave. We often see the same boats twice each day on
their way to Gargrave and then on their way back again.
We
have met and talked with many of the private boaters moored in Skipton over the
last few days and the general consensus seems to be that they will stay in
Skipton until the canal finally reopens even if they are on restricted 3-day
moorings. I must admit I can’t see CRT
bothering to reprimand anyone for overstaying given the circumstances. It’s all rather good news for the ccers who
work in the area of course as they don’t have to worry about moving.
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| The aqueduct over Eller Beck just down from our mooring |
Wednesday
afternoon was spent in Skipton museum.
I
must admit that I don’t think I have ever manged to visit a museum and read
every word that was posted with the artefacts.
Maybe it was because the history of the Craven area is so interesting or
maybe it was because there wasn’t much on display.
I
did learn a new word, and one that I should have known from my farming days, ‘boskin’. A boskin is the wooden divider between cows
in cattle sheds or shippons as they are called up here. I also learnt a new
fact which was so obvious once I realised what it was. I had often wondered why milkmaids’ stools (milkers’
stools in the modern age) generally only have three legs. A description of a milkmaid’s stool in the
museum pointed out that three legs counteract the unevenness of flagstone floors.
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| Inconsiderately placed mooring rings for todays’ towpath users, spotted on the walk back from the museum – maybe that’s why no boats were moored there |
In the evening we went to
a lovely restaurant, called Le Caveau, for a meal courtesy of my children’s
last birthday present to me.
We had a
really pleasant evening and got on well with the manageress.
I mention that because, once we got talking
she explained that she had Googled my name after I made the booking.
I expressed some surprise and then she warned
me that she had been a bit concerned waiting for our arrival and that I shouldn’t
follow suit.
It wasn’t until I was
writing this that I thought about it again and found the cause of her
consternation.
Fortunately, Payne is a
very common surname and there are probably dozens of Neil Paynes and not all of
us are in prison!
We walked to Gargrave on
Thursday to pick up the car and find somewhere to park it in Skipton that wouldn’t
cost anything and wouldn’t annoy local residents.
Later on, I had a meeting with Ian at the
boatyard to go through the final details of the works we are having done whilst
we are on holiday.
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| The angled entrance to the dry dock where Chalkhill Blue 2 will be having some work done soon |
Friday was this week’s, ‘hill
walk’ day.
I planned a five mile walk
around Ilkley moor starting at the top end of town.
We set off up to see the
Cow & Calf rocks first – no pictures as they are such a busy tourist spot; most
visitors arrive by car and park in a car park by the rocks rather than
scrambling up the hillside from Ilkley.
I say no pictures, but here is one showing steps carved into the Cow
rock to make it easier for people to get up it.
Talking about carvings,
all the rocks in the general area of the Cow & Calf are covered in
inscriptions that have been carved out by visitors over the years and just as
bad are all the discarded barbecues and general food and drink rubbish littering
the ground.
Climbing up further, the
Pancake stone came into sight; how many centuries will it be before this rock
topples off the edge?
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| Pancake stone |
Ilkley moor seems to be littered
with erratics, boulders left behind by melting glaciers in improbable locations. Our next port of call was one of these rocks
called Haystack rock from its shape. Haystack
rock is covered in cup and ring carvings – a peculiar art dating from the Bronze
Age; many of the erratic boulders on Ilkley moor bear the cup and ring marks.
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| Haystack rock |
After reaching the summit
of Ilkley moor we crossed over to Burley moor to find the Twelve Apostles.
These are the remains of a Bronze Age stone
circle that originally consisted of up to 20 stones.
On the way we started talking about Yorkshire’s
‘national’ anthem, ‘On Ilkla Moor Baht ‘at’ (
On Ilkley moor without a hat).
Karen said she didn’t really know the words but told me her dad used to
sing it to her even though he was a Lancastrian.
After a while Karen started singing and we
were both pleasantly surprised how many of the words she actually remembered
😊
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| The Twelve Apostles |
As
lovely as it was to hear Karen singing I suspected I would end up with the tune
as an earworm during the night.
The stone
circle marked the most southerly point of our walk and we continued in a
clockwise direction to complete our circular walk and get back to Ilkley.
Most of the rest of the walk was on the Dalesway
and at one point we passed the poetry box.
This was placed on the moor following one of Ilkley’s literary
festivals and acts as a poem swap.
The idea being that walkers
would write a poem, post it in the letter box slit, turn the handle and out
would pop a poem written by a previous walker.
I
have to admit that I turned the handle to read a poem without composing one
myself. It was a simple poem explaining
how a couple had met on the moor and had ended up getting married. To be fair, I put the piece of paper back in
the box.
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| Wonderful that the poem box hasn’t been vandalised and is clearly still used |
We
were soon heading back down to Ilkley and could make out several of the landmarks
we had come to know since joining the bridge club several months ago.
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| Nearly back down to Ilkley |
In the early 1800s over a
third of Ilkley’s buildings were hotels and lodging houses which sounds very high until you see population figures from those days.
The 1841 census recorded 521 people living in
the village, as it was then, with a further 257 temporary residents.
These transient people were visitors to Ilkley’s
many baths and hydropathic centres, hence the high proportion of hotels etc.
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| More erratics on our way down |
Our next stop was at White
Wells, originally an open-air spa bath built around 1700.
Over the years the site was expanded and by
the end of the 1700s the current bathhouse was built.
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| Rear of White Wells bathhouse |
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| All that remains today is a plunge pool but it can still be used by the general public |
We finished off our walk
by having a wander around the town and some of its grand avenues of stone-built
villas so typical of spa towns.
We were
rather pleased to find three more Victorian post boxes bringing our tally for
Ilkley to an amazing nine.
My son Steve,
who also collects VR boxes, has aptly renamed Ilkley to VR Mecca
😊
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