THE NORTH RIDING PROJECT

Below Cauldron Snout, Maize Beck runs into the Tees from the west and its valley provides a footway into Westmorland.  The track is followed from the bridge above the fall over a swampy hill shoulder into the remote hamlet of Birkdale, the valley of the birch trees.  The trees have long since disappeared and the place is bare and open, but the fell pastures are gay with globe-flowers and mountain pansies in the early summer.  The fields slope down to Maize Beck, and beyond the land rises to the long ridge of Mickle Fell, the highest mountain in Yorkshire.

Ramsden/Teesdale, 1947