In almost every direction there are opportunities for splendid mountain walks, and if the tracks are followed the danger of hidden pot-holes is comparatively small. From the summit of Ingleborough, and, indeed, from most of the fells that reach 2,000 feet, there are magnificent views across the brown fells, broken up with horizontal lines formed by the bare rocky scars. CHAPTER XIX CONCERNING THE WOLDS On wide uplands of chalk the air has a raciness, the sunlight a purity and a sparkle, not to be found in lowlands. There may be no streams, perhaps not even a pond; you may find few large trees, and scarcely any parks; ruined abbeys and even castles may be conspicuously absent, and yet the landscapes have a power of attracting and fascinating. This is exactly the case with the Wolds of Yorkshire, and their characteristics are not unlike the chalk hills of Sussex, or those great expanses of windswept downs, where the weathered monoliths of Stonehenge have resisted sun and storm for ages. When we endeavour to analyse the power of attraction exerted by the Wolds, we find it to exist in the sweeping outlines of the land with scarcely a house to be seen for many miles, in the purity of the air owing to the absence of smoke, in the brilliance of the sunlight due to the whiteness of the roads and fields, and in the wonderful breezes that for ever blow across pasture, stubble, and roots. Above the eastern side of the valley, where the Derwent takes its deep and sinuous course towards the alluvial lands, the chalk first makes its appearance in the neighbourhood of Acklam, and farther north at Wharram-le-Street, where picturesque hollows with precipitous sides break up the edge of the cretaceous deposits. Eastwards the high country, scarred here and there with gleaming chalk-pits, and netted with roads of almost equal whiteness, continues to the great headland of Flamborough, where the sea frets and fumes all the summer, and lacerates the cliffs during the stormy months. The masses of flinty chalk have shown themselves so capable of resisting the erosion of the sea that the seaward termination of the Wolds has for many centuries been becoming more and more a pronounced feature of the east coast of England, and if the present rate of encroachment along the low shores of Holderness is continued, this accentuation will become still more conspicuous. The open roads of the Wolds, bordered by bright green grass and hedges that lean away from the direction of the prevailing wind, give wide views to bare horizons, or glimpses beyond vast stretches of waving corn, of distant country, blue and indistinct, and so different in character from the immediate surroundings as to suggest the ocean.