CHAPTER II

ALONG THE ESK VALLEY


To see the valley of the Esk in its richest garb, one must wait for a
spell of fine autumn weather, when a prolonged ramble can be made along
the riverside and up on the moorland heights above. For the dense
woodlands, which are often merely pretty in midsummer, become
astonishingly lovely as the foliage draping the steep hillsides takes on
its gorgeous colours, and the gills and becks on the moors send down a
plentiful supply of water to fill the dales with the music of
rushing streams.

Climbing up the road towards Larpool, we take a last look at quaint old
Whitby, spread out before us almost like those wonderful old prints of
English towns they loved to publish in the eighteenth century. But
although every feature is plainly visible--the church, the abbey, the
two piers, the harbour, the old town and the new--the detail is all lost
in that soft mellowness of a sunny autumn day. We find an enthusiastic
photographer expending plates on this familiar view, which is sold all
over the town; but we do not dare to suggest that the prints, however
successful, will be painfully hackneyed, and we go on rejoicing that the
questions of stops and exposures need not trouble us, for the world is
ablaze with colour.

Beyond the great red viaduct, whose central piers are washed by the
river far below, the road plunges into the golden shade of the woods
near Cock Mill, and then comes out by the river's bank down below, with