Beyond this again comes Hucks Brow, the end of the first stage out of Kendal, and Forest Hall, which, with the Abbey Farm at Shap, forms one of the two largest sheep-farms in Westmoreland. Another rise of a mile and a half, and a steep descent leads to Boroughbridge, a hamlet where an ancient bridge spans a mountain stream and is neighboured by a few cottages and the “Bay Horse” inn. From this point the final and most trying ascent is made. An old road goes winding away in the valley below, past Hausefoot Farm, but it has long ceased to be of any but strictly local use. The road across Shap summit is built upon peat bogs, and needs constant repair. The boggy nature of the foundation is not apparent to the casual wayfarer, but may readily be discovered by standing beside it at the passing of a motor-car, when it very perceptibly shakes. At the descent from the summit towards Shap village, the old road crosses to the right hand, and away to the right, half a mile across the moors, the hotel of Shap Wells is seen, rising from its wooded hollow. Dr. Granville, who wrote a work on English spas in 1845, came in due course to Shap Wells, and remarks justly upon the wild and remote situation of the wells and the hotel, but he does not lay any stress upon the truly awful ancient-egg flavour of the medicinal waters, which, if their medicinal virtues be in proportion to their taste, must needs be very remarkably curative. He talks rather of the colour scheme of the water, than of _bouquet_, and waxes eloquent on its bluish, opalescent hue. He was here in the height of summer, and found at the hotel a “lady sitting at a roasting fire (of which by-the-by I was glad to partake also) on the 6th of August.” But notwithstanding the curious taste and flavour of the waters, the hotel is greatly frequented. It is not the waters, but the bracing air, that now forms the attraction. [Sidenote: _SHAP_] The village of Shap, although itself of no mean altitude, seems quite sheltered after the four miles’ run down from the summit. Still stands the old “Greyhound” inn of coaching days, as you enter the village. And not only of coaching days, but of times earlier, as the tablet over the door, dated 1703, proclaims. This was the inn, doubtless, at which Prince Charlie called, on his way, and found the landlady a “sad imposing wife.” The weird greyhound sculptured on the tablet somewhat resembles the Saxon idea of a horse, as carved on White Horse Hill, in Berkshire. [Illustration: SIGN OF THE “GREYHOUND,” SHAP.]