‘Fields of Gold’ – Sting 🎶
https://open.spotify.com/track/0I1DJdLt9BKOb7GWmWxCjo?si=7YVSVwmMQwSnxl5XTZVCCQ
Pateley Bridge really punches’ ….!
That was my overriding conclusion from my 6 mile amble through, above and beyond, the little market town that is Pateley Bridge, set in the heart of the beautiful Yorkshire Dales of North Yorkshire.
Yesterday afternoon, Thursday 3 September, I parked my car in the old Workhouse car park, shouldered my rucksack and set off on this recce walk out of Pateley and up the Nidd Valley.
I’ve attached my map if you are interested: though I I never stick to it, choosing to chop and change throughout my route.
One of our friends Ravi, doesn’t like elevations: so I was trying to magically transform what is an elevated walk into a flat one!
Impossible!
But on Saturday I’ll reverse it as it is a much kinder ascent if we start in Wath rather than Pateley.
In all honesty, it proved to be one of the most beautiful local walks I’ve undertaken in the six years that we have lived in this area.
I was walking for several reasons: firstly, because I love to.
Walking is my favourite hobby, and it allows me to practise three of my other favourites: photography, writing blogs and baking cakes, which I offer to the walkers who join me.
Additionally on Saturday, I will be leading a local walk which will deliberately take in a ‘Pateley Pause’ to allow us to watch the professional cyclists in the ‘Tour of Britain’ bike race blaze through town.
The former teacher in me, still likes to carry out a ‘recce’ before I lead a walk.
After all:
What does the British army unofficially say?
‘P*** poor preparation, leads to p*** poor performance!’
Who am I to argue with the British Army?
In a recent conversation, a local friend had waxed lyrically about the joys of buying fish and chips from our local chippy in Pateley Bridge (it is a really good chippy) and taking them up to a roadside bench on the Silver Hill landmark, to eat them.
He reckoned it to be one of the best viewpoints in the country.
He had aroused my curiosity enough to decide that I wanted to walk up Silver Hill, albeit minus the fish and chips, and then continue my walk further up the Nidd Valley to Wath.
Initially, and almost instantly, I regretted my decision.
A long, steep climb up behind St Cuthbert’s Church left me hot, bothered and breathless.
It was steep: something I already knew, as I had planned the walk and created my route on the OS Maps app.
Those contour lines were close together for a reason.
Somehow, the optimist in me still seems to ‘soften’ the obvious contours, whilst their real-time reality is always much more brutal.
The steep elevation out of Pateley did carry rewards.
The views across and up the valley were expansive, and heavy, dark clouds bubbling up in the west conveyed an ever-changing light.
It was an ever-changing panoramic perspective that would have provided ‘great expectations’ to a landscape artist’s and their palette.
In a more realistic way, it perfectly met the needs of this very amateur photographer!
The steep climb finally ended, as they always do, on a heather-clad hilltop terrace pockmarked by a glut of disused quarries. A stunning Yorkshire stone house stood proudly in pole position above that Pateley Panorama.
I met a lovely lady called Joyce, walking her three Yorkshire Terriers, and we proceeded to walk and chat for the next 20 minutes.
Yorkshire is nicknamed ‘God’s Own Country’ for a reason, and today, yet again, I was witnessing it, at first hand, with justifiable reasons galore, for that enviable title.
Walking always gifts us with opportunities to chat to like-minded people.
My 20 minutes with Joyce was uplifting.
I left her as the heather-clad track joined a minor hilltop road that winds northwards towards Wath, which was bathed in ambient, where changing mid-afternoon daylight, below me.
Blackberries accompanied me on my way.
Great clusters of them: nature’s ‘tribute’ for this most amazing ‘summer of all summers’.
Toadstools started their autumnal ‘pop up’.
Look closely and they are everywhere.
This fun guy loves his fungi!
Brilliant red rowan berries reinforced my belief that this season, of all seasons, will finally be the year of the rise of Bristol City FC.
Dreaming is good for you apparently: but!
I think it was Einstein who said (with my poetic licence) that the ‘definition of madness is believing the same thing year after year!’
But one day it might happen!🙏
In my lifetime?🫣
The history books may show that the summer of 2026 was not great for the climate or water storage, but it was undoubtedly brilliant for wearing shorts and getting out and about in a T-shirt.
‘Eye candy’ stone-built properties became my norm: empty barns and farmhouses, plus dwellings that had been lovingly and painstakingly restored.
Once again, it sparked a thought in me. So many properties locally should have a Grade I or II listing, and yet they don’t.
UK planning laws make no sense.
It could be argued that my own property, way over on the other side of the valley, could also be listed: it isn’t, thank goodness.
After all, owning a listed property in Britain in the 21st century always generates a whole bunch of extra bureaucracy, interference, issues and expense if you ever want to renovate, maintain or modernise it.
‘The Law (REALLY) is an Ass,’ I reflected – not for the first time in my walking life!
An hour after starting my walk, I ambled past a small cluster of properties that make up the hamlet of Wath.
I passed ‘Tub House’: what a great name!
And a barn with four distinctive white chimneys.
What had this been in its previous life?
I walked past the tiniest of Methodist chapels, still in pristine condition and, according to its signage, seemingly still in use.
Was this simple but beautiful place a visual tribute to a gentler, kinder and better time when the old ways where really the best ways?
A mile beyond Wath, with Gouthwaite Reservoir sparkling below me, I reached my turning point as I picked up the ‘Nidderdale Way’, which follows the River Nidd right up the valley to Lofthouse and Middlesmoor, and the brooding elevations known as Little Whernside and Great Whernside that mark the end of the Nidd Valley.
I wondered at the amazing construction efforts of the navvies of the 19th century who had constructed mighty dam walls armed only with pick, shovel and sweat on their brows.
“Summertime: and the living is easy….”
My route had brought me down to the valley floor, and an appropriate ‘earworm’ song became my companion for the next 10 minutes:
https://open.spotify.com/track/2U8D3hTpsgAGZBnNLSoAZQ?si=ZhGCfEOUTauiyIxQaDsvNw&utm_source=copy-link
Sheep loitered near my path.
Frequently they stopped grazing to stare at me!
Staring for ages!
The unblinking unending stare of a toddler!
I’ve often asked in these blogs: ‘why do sheep stare?’
No one has answered my yet! I ask again:
Why do they?
Given the lack of answers I flicked one more time into Google:
Such a boringly obvious answer!
I followed the River Nidd for a few minutes and made a mental note to check out why it has such a distinctive brackish colour.
Once home, a quick flick into Google gave me some answers that were logical, understandable and one of which was really quite unpalatable.
Sewage discharge is still a ‘thing’, even in the beautiful, supposedly protected Yorkshire Dales, and in scribe when we all habit our so-called progressive modern world.
Water management in this country is still a scandal!
It really is a ‘Dirty Business!’ – as depicted in the Netflix series of that name.
QUESTION:
Which madcap policymaker decided that privatising our water supply was going to be a benefit to the nation?
ANSWER:
That would be Margaret Thatcher!
Madness!
I will say no more!
This blog is not about me making political statements.
My trail took me along the western fringes of Wath before I finally broke away from the river and my original planned route and started a more gentle climb back towards Pie Gill Close and Silver Hill again.
Silver Hill has a great name and an even better perspective.
It was worth the double climb.
More stunning, west-facing properties greedily consumed the glorious landscape below them.
The last flowers and scent of wild honeysuckle grew in pockets along my route and were my regular companions along with those blackberries.
Two hours and 6 miles after starting, I was back in Pateley Bridge, bypassing its pretty High Street, to return to my car at the old historic ‘Pateley Workhouse’.
I saw my friend Charles outside Nidderdale Museum, which occupies two floors of the Workhouse, and we had a quick chat.
Charles is a ‘mover and shaker’ in these parts.
He and his wife, Heather, retired from ‘London living’ to move to Pateley Bridge 7 years ago and run the exceptional ‘Coco Joe’s’ hot chocolate café on the High Street.
They are busy people.
In their ‘spare’ time they are also trustees of the Nidderdale Museum.
https://www.nidderdalemuseum.com/
Charles and Heather are great people and great fun.
I sauntered into the main yard at the back of the Workhouse.
Who lived here, I wondered, and what was their life like?
Harsh, I would guess!
Another Google search at home provided some quick answers.
I was correct. Workhouse living was probably a very tough existence.
Descriptors of the residents of this building back in the 1800s record them as being ‘idiot’, ‘destitute and improvident’ and ‘insane’.
The brutal terminology made me wince.
Prior to my retirement in 2020, I had worked in Special Education for nearly 40 years, ultimately leading a West Yorkshire special school as its Headteacher for my last 15 years.
I reflected that those derogatory and inhuman terms were in use not so long ago.
We had written a first essay at university on the topic of ‘terminology’ in 1982.
Those terms (and worse) were still officially used back then!
I am so thankful for the terminology in use now: terms that identify someone with unique additional needs.
That’s something that has changed for the better.
Much kinder!
Our modern world still does have progressive positives, despite what the moaners like to say!
The Workhouse was empty when I arrived, though I later discovered that Alice, who makes fantastic jewellery was still hard at it in her studio.
https://share.google/BOzcLg1J18PZkMHhS
A small number of artist studios adjoin its car park.
The building is stunning, but I know that its management – or is that mismanagement? – by North Yorkshire Council attracts a lot of local criticism.
A community studio: available for hire through ‘The Makers Yard’ charitable ‘Community Interest Company’ (CIC) showcased its proud (Bristol City Red) newly installed frontage.
https://www.pateleymakersyard.co.uk/
This building deserves more investment!
I chatted with the talented Debbie who runs a studio with her husband Ian. Such lovely people who’s life work and studio was destroyed in that fire in 2023.
They have just reopened a new studio at the Makers Yard and deserve every success.
Resilient to the core! 👏
“Up from the ashes!”
Literally!
An adjoining building, which hosts the offices of National Landscapes (formerly known as AONB – ‘Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty’), was badly ravaged by a fire four years ago.
Their studio was in that building.
The local Council seem to have done very little to renovate or restore it, apart from cladding it in a crazy labyrinth of scaffolding that looks to have come straight out of a ‘Meccano’ film set.
This building has SO MUCH potential and, in typical Local Council style, it appears that what has been done to restore the building has in fact been done through the voluntary, visionary and defiant efforts of a few unpaid game changers.
Given investment, the Pateley Workhouse could become THE art and artisan hub of North Yorkshire.
It already has a small number of talented local artists based in studios there: jewellers, stonemasons, cabinet makers, potters and my own daughter, who works as a textile designer for a German-based company.
Can you guess which colour doors belong to Rosie’s studio?
This group have a collective vision to restore the Workhouse to a better version of its previous glory.
Even the police presence here is of a bygone age!
I don’t think I’ve seen a copper in that building.
This ‘Pateley Potential’ of the High Street and the Makers Yard could easily mirror the rise of Hebden Bridge, some 40 miles to the west.
“Where there is no vision, the people perish” is a famous Bible verse from Proverbs 29:18.
One day, soon I hope, the ‘visionaries’ employed in the places of influence, might see the potential of this quaint and beautiful old town.
Ruefully, I walked to the bottom of the High Street and saw that the bunting and flags were up and fluttering gaily in the breeze.
I was reminded that a national newspaper had featured the ‘10 top places to live in Yorkshire’.
Pateley wasn’t one of them.
Despite its challenges, (all towns have challenges: even London and ‘posh’ Harrogate) I believe it should be.
I for one, wouldn’t want to be anywhere else.
Yay!
The bunting was uplifting.
Someone has made an effort and it needs recognition and appreciation!
The annual ‘Tour of Britain’ bike race comes through Pateley Bridge at around 12.30 on Saturday afternoon.
https://www.britishcycling.org.uk/tourofbritain/men/stagefour
You might think the bunting was up for that event.
But you’d be wrong!
We all know it was put up to welcome the 20 or so walkers coming out of the urban sprawl of Leeds and its surrounds, to savour and explore this little bit of ‘English Glory’ with me on Saturday!
Pateley Bridge and Nidderdale is clearly on the map of British Cycling: it just needs some impetus and visionaries with influence to fully polish up this jewel that sparkles both in the Dales and Yorkshire’s crowns.
Did I mention Nidderdale and it’s beautiful heather?
Not this time!
That’s for another time.
Thanks for the read.
Martin x
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All of my photographs are ‘seen as ‘scene’!’ I really want you to see what I saw when I pressed my shutter: not a touched up version of a non reality.
Just my own quirky perspective I guess.
Pateley is quirky: I guess it’s catching!
QUESTION: When is a photograph a photo or a piece of art embellished by its taker?
My hunt for the perfect photograph continues! 🤷🏼♂️
Martin Moorman is a 61 year old retired Headteacher who lives with his wife Nicky, daughter Rosie and her family in North Yorkshire, UK. Happily married for 36 years, Martin and Nicky have 3 grown up children, Rosie, Harry and Jake, all happily married too.
In his spare time Martin loves walking, photography, blogging, football, renovating, cooking and chatting to anyone who will listen!
Martin Moorman 