The Rivers of Great Britain, Descriptive, Historical, Pictorial: Rivers of the South and West CoastsVarious
History
The Rivers of Great Britain, Descriptive, Historical, Pictorial: Rivers of the South and West Coasts
Various
Great Britain -- Description and travel; Rivers -- Great Britain
It is a rare kind of panorama for this part of the country. The
radiating valleys in the Lancashire portion of the Lune's course bring
in the Greta and the Wenning. The former must not be confounded with
the other Greta that is born near Helvellyn, nor with the tributary of
the Tees in the North Riding, at the bridge of which Nicholas Nickleby,
old Squeers, and the wretched boys were put down from the coach _en
route_ to Dotheboys Hall. This Greta which is a tributary of the Lune
is a rocky-bedded, brawling, rushing little stream, tumbling down from
Whernside, and, between Ingleborough and Ingleton Fells, finding its
way through a dale which is much visited for the sake of the roaring
subterranean waterfall of Wethercote Cave, the charming surroundings of
Ingleton village, and the caves and fells of Kingsdale valley.
The Wenning is the larger tributary, and its popular attractions
are the subterranean grotto called Ingleborough Cave, in the gloomy
Clapdale ravine, and Hornby Castle, conspicuously placed on a craggy
height fringed with old trees. This interesting country is now
traversed by a railway branching west from Settle, with a junction at
Clapham for the aforesaid Ingleton, and affording to the traveller
a sight of Giggleswick Scar and the geological curiosity of Craven
Fault. The Hornby Castle referred to was built by one of the Normans
on the site of a Roman villa, and the ruins near are those of a priory
reared in the sixteenth century. The vale of Caton, within a five-mile
walk of Lancaster, at the navigable limit of the Lune, moved the poet
Gray to remarks which might fairly be applied to more than one spot
in Lunedale. These are the words: "To see the view in perfection,
you must go into a field on the left. Here Ingleborough, behind a
variety of lesser mountains, makes the background of the prospect. On
each hand, up the middle distance, rise two sloping hills, the left
clothed with thick woods, the right with variegated rock and herbage.
Between them, in the richest of valleys, the Lune serpentines for many
a mile, and comes forth ample and clear, through a well-wooded and
richly-pastured foreground." For the last seven miles of its course the
Lune runs almost parallel to and within a short distance of Morecambe
Bay, and the narrow neck of land which it forms is distinguished by the
designation of Little Fylde.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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