Roof Farm Cottage Gunnerside

02/09/2024

A beautiful Monday in 🐮🌼

Thank you Swaledale Snaps

11/08/2024

If you're coming up to the Yorkshire Dales National Park next week the heather should be in full bloom 👍🏻

05/08/2024

Week now booked

Due to a cancellation Roof Farm Cottage is now available week commencing Saturday 7th September 2024.

Situated in the heart of idyllic Swaledale, Roof Farm Cottage offers comfortable accommodation and magnificent panoramic views. Converted from a barn in 2001 this peaceful cottage boasts beautiful décor and modern conveniences within a traditional stone built cottage.

30/07/2024

23/07/2024

If you are staying at Roof Farm Cottage and don’t fancy cooking one evening you can eat in or have a takeaway from Tabby’s Table .
Highly recommend very tasty food

08/07/2024

A different view of the hay meadows at Gunnerside.

08/07/2024

06/07/2024

24/06/2024

It never ceases to amaze me how beautiful it is here in Swaledale.

18/06/2024

Looking down towards the buttercup meadows at Muker, I was hoping for a swathe of yellow but there’s still a subtle yellow tinge to the meadows.

05/06/2024

30/05/2024

19/04/2024

Favourite features & places in Swaledale? It's the perfect place to retreat from a busy world and enjoy the fresh air. As James Herriot wrote, "on the empty moors, with the curlews crying, I have been able to find peace and tranquillity. It is a land of pure air, rocky streams and hidden waterfalls.”

The River Swale is one of England’s fastest flowing, quickest rising rivers, rushing its way between Thwaite, Muker, Reeth and on to Richmond. Keld's waterfalls are popular with walkers (and midges!).

​Known as the 'Cathedral of the Dales', the parish church of St.Andrews in Grinton is a grade 1 listed building dating from the 12th century featuring a wealth of notable features. Even older are the remains of Maiden Castle in Reeth likely dating from the Iron Age.

Swaledale’s only town is Richmond, where the 100ft high Richmond Castle walls and sloping cobbled market place dominate the town. Popular local events include Swaledale Festival, Muker Show and Reeth Show. I particularly love to hear Muker Silver Band and Reeth brass band.
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​On the moors you’re likely to see the small and hardy Swaledale sheep. They're an iconic breed and such a strong feature of the Dales, a Swaledale sheep's head is used as the emblem of Yorkshire Dales National Park

In the lower areas, you’ll see tranquil hay meadows (at their best in the early summer months) bordered by a myriad of dry stone walls and punctuated by cow houses or cow'us - many refer to them as field barns. The hay meadows are filled with wildflowers, insect and bird life. It’s hard to believe these calm pastures and wild moors were ever a site for industry but you can still see the remains of the former lead mining industry.

Many people will recognise a special part of Swaledale from the title sequence of the original TV series 'All Creatures Great and Small', when Siegfried’s car splashes through the stream. This beautiful spot sits in a dip in the moors beside the minor road from Low Row to Arkengarthdale, and is the perfect place to relax and take in the scenery.

Where are your favourite spots? Photos?

30/03/2024

Ghyllfoot Tearoom in Gunnerside now open.

30/03/2024

03/12/2023

How many miles of dry stone walls are there in the Yorkshire Dales? How long does it take to wall a metre? How old are the oldest ones?

Dry stone walls are one of the Yorkshire Dales' most distinctive features, and some of the oldest man-made landscape features. It's believed there are over 5000 miles (8000 km) of dry stone walls in the Yorkshire Dales. Not all of them are in tip-top condition but most are well maintained.

The very first dry stones walls were probably created centuries ago when early farmers were clearing the land for cultivation. Some walls are really thicker than might seem necessary, just because they were built in very stony areas. Most walls are built to mark field boundaries or mark land ownership, and limit movement by sheep and cows.

Tom Lord of Lower Winskill Farm, Langcliffe has over seven miles of dry-stone walls on his farm, some of which date back to the 13th century and are believed to have been built to deter wolves!

When on a tour of his farm at The Wensleydale Experience, Adrian Thornton-Berry showed me some very straight walls rising up the hill near Swinithwaite and said they were built around 200 years ago by French prisoners of war taken from Napoleaon's army. Nearby are some large block foundations to a wall that date back to the times of the Knights Templar...

If you see very large stones being used as the base of the wall, that's often an indication of a wall that may date back to medieval times. Straight walls and fields that seem more uniform may date back from the Enclose period of the late 18th and early 19th century.

Dry stone walls are 'dry' because they are made without mortar, simply relying on their complex structure to stay up. They take time to build, rarely more than about 3-4 metres of wall in a day, which would use around 4 tonnes of stone - all lifted by hand! A good dry stone waller never picks up a piece of stone twice but is able to look at a pile of walling stone and pick up the right size and shape of stone every time. A well built wall should easily last for more than 100 years, with minimal maintenance.

The foundation course usually consists of larger stones, upon which two wall faces are built, forming a cavity which is filled will smaller stones. Walls are finished or capped with large stones laid at an angle or on edge. Through stones bind the two wall faces together. If you look at walls in different parts of the Dales, you'll notice small differences in their construction. If you compare the Dales dry stone walls to those in Devon and Cornwall and you'll notice a very different style.

You can see demonstrations of dry stone walling at agricultural shows through out the Dales during the Summer months, and learn more about thurles, batter and smoots, cripple holes, sheep creeps & throughs.

02/12/2023

Beautiful morning in Gunnerside. Photograph from the cottage

02/12/2023

Some fantastic views of the Northern Lights this evening, this one from Gunnerside 👍🏻

13/11/2023

You can tell a lot about the history of places in the Yorkshire Dales from their name. Ham, ley, ton, pen, foss... all give clues to the past. First came the Celtic tribe of Brigantes, who gave us places with 'pen' in the name, meaning ‘hill’. For example, Penhill, (so good they named it twice?!) and Pen-y-ghent.

Anglo Saxons were the next influence. Look out for names ending in ham or ton (eventually leading to town) which meant a farmstead. The name before –ton or –ham was often either the name of a person who owned that land, geographic feature or a trade carried on there. Masham was the farmstead owned by the Saxon chief, Massa so it was Massa’s ham. This is why it’s pronounced Mass-ham not Mash-em! Skipton originally meant sheep farm! It’s hard to imagine that once woods and forests covered much of the Dales. Ley meant ‘clearing in the woods’ e.g. Wensley.

The Vikings contributed to our language in a really significant way. They gave us suffixes like thwaite meaning ‘clearing’, keld meaning ‘spring’, foss or force for ‘waterfall’, and gill or ghyll meaning ‘ravine’.

Many landscape features still use names from the time of the Danelaw:

Beck – stream
Cam – bank or ridge
Carr – wetland
Fell - mountain
Garth – enclosed grass paddock by a farmstead
Ling – heather
Mire – a pool e.g Redmire would have been a reed pool
Moss – boggy land
Nab – outcrop
Scar – steep rock face
Sett or seat – upland fields, often summer pastures
Syke – gully
Tarn – upland lake
Thorpe - settlement
Whin – thorny bushes

You may have noticed some more fanciful French-sounding names like Jervaulx which came from the Norman. Richmond was originally a strong hill, Richemont, which makes sense when you see the castle!

In the Dales we’re used to the importance of rivers in naming places – most dales are named after their river e.g. Wharfedale, Ribblesdale. A valley is called a dale (from 'tal'), although in some areas you might see words like dean instead, and the valley bottom was called… bottom! Lots of place names end in ford, as in a shallow river crossing. Kirk was the Scandinavian word for church. Kirkby would have meant church by…

​Maybe now when you look at the map or drive around the Dales, you'll also see it through the eyes of those ancient settlers. They're long gone, but the names remain.

06/11/2023

The Dales has some of the best cycling opportunities in the world. The Tour de France has been here; the World Cycling Championships has been here, while the fun never stops off-road. Explore more 👇

https://cyclethedales.org.uk/

20/10/2023

Swaledale near Gunnerside Moor.

Thank you to Scarlett Armstrong for the photo.

13/10/2023

Your is this tremendous view of 💚

Who's ready for the weekend? Why not download walks from our website or use our FREE walking app and get out in the ? We have routes for all abilities across the .

📸 Walking Man Photography

13/09/2023

09/09/2023

We are looking for a new tenant! The Kings Head, Gunnerside is a freehouse in Swaledale, in the heart of the Yorkshire Dales National park. This is a Fantastic opportunity to continue the great work of this successful community pub. £250K+, Low incoming costs, below-market rent and spacious 3 bed flat make this a highly attractive proposition for the right team.
email [email protected] for more details.

05/09/2023

Beautiful early evening light in Gunnerside.

23/08/2023

Short drive from the cottage. You can either go via Tann Hill or up and through the famous water splash on to Langthwaite. Once there you can enjoy a lovely circular walk from the car park.

The sun breaks through the clouds at Langthwaite in the Yorkshire Dales. The village was used for the filming of several scenes in the television series All Creatures Great and Small.
A Visual Tour of the Yorkshire Dales: BritainAndBritishness.com/YorkshireDales/

Bob Radlinski

30/06/2023

The Swale Trail is a 20km valley bottom route aimed at aspiring young mountain bikers and families who want to ride together. 70% of the trail, which runs between Reeth and Keld in Swaledale, is on unsurfaced tracks and is easy to follow.

You can do different sections or the whole route, and there's bike hire, cafes and places to stop along the way. More 👇

https://cyclethedales.org.uk/route/swale_trail/

📸 Stephen Garnett