In journeying in any direction through the Wolds it is impossible to
forget the existence of Early Man, for on the sky-line just above the
road will appear a row of two or three rounded projections from the
regular line of turf or stubble. They are burial-mounds that the plough
has never levelled--heaps of earth that have resisted the
disintegrating action of weather and man for thousands of years. If
such relics of the primitive inhabitants of this island fail to stir
the imagination, then the mustiness must exist in the unresponsive mind
rather than in the subject under discussion.
In making an exploration of the Wolds a good starting-place is the
old-fashioned town of Malton, whence railways radiate in five
directions, including the line to Great Driffield, which takes
advantage of the valley leading up to Wharram Percy, and there tunnels
its way through the high ground.
Choosing a day when the weather is in a congenial mood for rambling,
lingering, or picnicking, or, in other words, when the sun is not too
hot, nor the wind too cold, nor the sky too grey, we make our start
towards the hills. We go on wheels--it is unimportant how many, or to
what they are attached--in order that the long stretches of white road
may not become tedious. The stone bridge over the Derwent is crossed,
and, glancing back, we see the piled-up red roofs crowded along the
steep ground above the further bank, with the church raising its spire
high above its newly-restored nave. Then the wide street of Norton,
which is scarcely to be distinguished from Malton, being separated from
it only by the river, shuts in the view with its houses of whity-red
brick, until their place is taken by hedgerows. To the left stretches
the Vale of Pickering, still a little hazy with the remnants of the
night's mist. Straight ahead and to the right the ground rises up,
showing a wall chequered with cornfields and root-crops, with long
lines of plantations appearing like dark green caterpillars crawling
along the horizon.
The first village encountered is Rillington, with a church whose stone
spire and the tower it rests upon have the appearance of being copied
from Pickering. Inside there is an Early English font, and one of the
arcades of the nave belongs to the same period.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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