It may make compelling “slow television”, but slow travel this is not. As the bus whizzes along the A684, I’m willing the driver to slow down so I can better enjoy the view. The single-decker’s spotless picture windows and elevated seats deliver a fast-forwarding pano-shot of Wensleydale, its emerald curves broken up by solitary barns and drystone walls that snake up towards tree-softened valley slopes.
I’m taking a ride on the Wensleydale Flyer, sister service to the Northern Dalesman, whose meanderings through Swaledale and Ribblesdale, recorded for the recent fly-on-the-dashboard BBC4 documentary All Aboard! The Country Bus, captured the hearts (and perhaps lowered the blood pressure) of nearly a million viewers. One of some 14 interlinking routes that make up the DalesBus network and open up the Yorkshire Dales to car-free travellers, the Flyer begins its weekly Sunday service at Hawes, the pretty, cobbled home of Wensleydale cheese, and travels 40 miles along the valley to Northallerton, North Yorkshire’s county town.
I got on at the second stop, Bainbridge, a quiet village of yellowed limestone buildings. Its claim to fame is that it’s at the end of England’s shortest officially named river, the two-mile-long river Bain, whose tumblings soothed me to sleep the night before at Low Mill Guest House. The owners of this stylish boutique B&B, Neil and Jane McNair, are always delighted to see the Wensleydale Flyer trundle to a stop across the village green. Relative newcomers to this community – they were first-time visitors from London six years ago, when they fell in love with the disused but still-working water mill – they’ve thrown themselves behind the campaign to save the bus that connects it to its neighbours.
Like the Northern Dalesman, Ingleborough Pony and other much-loved services of the DalesBus network, the Wensleydale Flyer is managed by a volunteer-run social enterprise, which raises money from businesses, public bodies and charitable donations to keep the buses running (ticket sales do not cover its costs). Unless it can secure emergency funding – Neil and Jane have set up a crowdfunding website – the Flyer will stop running at the beginning of December, and its community of regular walkers, workers and shoppers will have to spend their Sundays at home.
Among the travellers on the bus today is Bernard, who works in a Hawes hotel, and always spends the Sundays when he is not working in Northallerton, where there’s a busy high street, as well as a hospital and mainline station. Hawes resident Ruth, originally from the village of Askrigg, no longer drives because of a shoulder injury and is travelling to meet a friend. Tim, a pensioner, has bus-hopped all the way from Lancashire to walk up Penhill, the Pennine ridge that dominates the southern edge of Wensleydale and commands views over Bishopdale and Coverdale. “I’ve been walking in the mountains all my life,” he says. “These buses make it possible for me to carry on.”
Tim’s getting off at West Witton, where a Michelin-listed seafood restaurant (The Wensleydale Heifer) would make for a tempting Sunday lunch. I could have taken the Flyer back to Hawes, where I arrived yesterday via the volunteer-supported Little White Bus (Mon-Sat) from Garsdale, a stop on the Settle-Carlisle railway. From Hawes, I could have hired a bike from Stage 1 Cycles (£20 for half a day), whose modish Firebox cafe is a coffee-lover’s hotspot, and pedalled into the Snaizeholme valley to walk its red squirrel trail. Or pottered round Hawes’s galleries, boutiques and antiques shops before a stroll along the river Ure to Hardraw Force, the 30-metre, single-drop waterfall said to be the tallest in England.
Instead, I’ve opted to travel to the village of Aysgarth, where the Ure’s descent over a series of wide, limestone tiers has been on the Wensleydale traveller’s to-do list since Wordsworth and Turner gushed over it. A five-minute walk from the bus stop, Aysgarth Falls are, indeed, mesmerising, but I don’t have time to linger: with four hours before the last bus back to Bainbridge, I’ve set my course for Bolton Castle, a medieval part-ruin lying a few fields away.
The easy-to-follow path crosses the defunct trackbed of the railway that once ran the length of this valley – a sobering reminder of the direction of travel for public transport in rural areas. (The Wensleydale Railway Association hopes one day to restore it, but that’s another story.) It’s a steep pull up to the 14th-century castle, whose symmetrical towers have turned golden in the autumn sunshine. After soup and sandwiches in its baronial tea room, I round the castle to follow a public byway that stays high along this south-facing slope for several miles, soaking up constant views across the U-shaped valley towards the long, flat plateau of Penhill.
After seven miles, four hours and half a pint of Black Sheep shandy (at the Wheatsheaf in Carperby), I’m back at the bus stop, where walkers Jackie, Roger and Jim are waiting over the road for the last 857 of the year – the summer Sunday bus that will take them south through Wharfedale towards Leeds, Wakefield and Harrogate. “National parks were created so that people from cities and towns could get into the countryside,” says Jackie, a supporter of Friends of DalesBus, the campaigning fundraising body that celebrates its 20th anniversary this year. “These buses mean everything to us: without them we’d have no way of getting here.”
- The Wensleydale Flyer needs £6,000 to keep running until next Easter, while more sustainable long-term funding is sought. Full details on the JustGiving page
- Low Mill Guest House is donating a pound from every booking to the campaign
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