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 hill-sides 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
the little village of Ruswarp on the opposite shore. The railway goes
over the Esk just below the dam, and does is very best to spoil every