It is impossible to say of the surrounding country that it is picturesque or charming – it is rather wild, savage, awful in its vast extent, and terrible in its solitudes. Were it not for the houses of Reeth and Grinton lying at the hill’s base, and for the signs of human life which show themselves here and there along the valley far below, one might well imagine that all this wild land had lain desolate since the days when the early Britons honeycombed its fell-sides for lead.
Fletcher/Picturesque2
It is surely the nature of their surroundings that breeds men like this, surely the great, silent hills, awful in their loneliness, the long stretches of solitary moorland, the music of the becks and gills which provides the steadfastness which is the most noticeable feature of the dalesman’s character. But the influences of the land from whence the Swale springs cannot be described – to gain but a slight understanding of it a man needs wander for long days through its valleys and across its moors, and must climb its highest points, there to marvel at the vastness of what is, after all, but the corner of a county.
Fletcher/Picturesque2
THE NORTH RIDING PROJECT 
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