Showing You the Way ..... Muker to Thwaite Circular

Showing You the Way ...... 

is a series of 3 illustrated walk leaflets for children.  

Pick up a leaflet in the Keld Countryside & Heritage Centre.

Today we explored the Cowus (cow house) trail, a circular walk from Muker to Thwaite and back.

  

This walk is 2.8 miles with a 600ft ascent. 

The first section is quite an uphill pull but once you get to Kisdon Houses it is level or downhill all the way .........

........ with magnificent views in all directions.

Looking east above and looking west below

 Once out onto the heather moor the path becomes rocky & uneven.  Although part of the Pennine Way, it is no more than a sheep trod and care is required.

Challenging and fun, this walk will bring out the adventurer in you! 

Back in the valley bottom follow the meadow paths, through narrow squeeze stiles to Muker.

But not before a well deserved picnic by the stream.

Further Adventures of Heidi and Hetty

Heidi and Hetty are doing a grand job of bringing up their lambs.

All three of them are fine examples of Herdwick sheep.

Look how Jacqui and Doris have grown!  Hetty is as cautious and camera shy as ever, she keeps her lambs close.

Heidi, on the other hand, is much more outgoing and will come quite near especially if she thinks I have some treats for her.

Marco is getting quite brave too!

He's becoming very handsome in a comical sort of way.  Don't you agree?

Summer on the farm

Summer on the farm is all about making fodder and clipping sheep.

We have made over 2000 small bales of hay and hundreds of round bale silage.

 

 We have been lucky.  We cut at the right time, the weather was on our side and the end result is a winter's worth of first class hay and silage for our sheep and cattle.  A lovely feeling.

So now all the hay and silage is made Chris, his brother and his nephew can concentrate on the sheep.

The weather is warming up so its time to clip.  The first to be sheared are the hoggs (the young sheep, born last year, who haven't been sheared before), then the ewes with singles and finally those running with twins.

 Heidi the Herdwick has a thick, dense fleece.  She will look very different without her coat which will be coming off soon.

Earlier this year there was a big fuss on social media that clipping sheep was cruel.  Ridiculous claims made by people who don't understand stock and farming.  The sheep are not ill treated during the process, they are held securely but carefully so that the fleece comes off quickly and in one piece. It is in the interest of the sheep's welfare to shear, maintaining healthy skin and a clean fleece for the coming winter. Not to clip would be like making us wear our heaviest winter coats all summer long and never changing our underwear!

  Almost all finished.  Note the lambs are not clipped.  They are too young and their wool is still fine.

Our Green Footprint

What is Upper Swaledale Holidays doing to reduce their carbon footprint, 

to reduce single use plastic and create less waste?

 

Upper Swaledale is without doubt a #green and pleasant land 

but what are we doing to keep it that way?

 Going #green

In the guest bathrooms at both Pry House Farm B&B and Hillcrest Cottage we have replaced single use plastic bottles of hand wash with refillable Cole & Lewis products. 

"Tourists are responsible for large quantities of single-use plastic that pollute beaches and threaten wildlife" says Molly Blackall in a recent on-line Guardian article.

At Pry House Farm B&B we decant marmalade & jam into attractive pots for the breakfast table and butter is served in a butter dish.  This eliminates hundreds of individual plastic jam servings and foil butter wrappers going into landfill.  

 

You will find wool pillows and duvets on most beds at the B&B, in the Shepherd's Hut and at Hillcrest Cottage. Nobody wants to sleep on a stained pillow - yuk!  Wool pillows are zipped so that the wool filling can be removed and the cover washed stopping pillows going into landfill.  Our wool duvets also wash beautifully.  Yes, its an expensive initial outlay but the environmental benefits outweigh the cost and in the long run it SAVES money. 

 We now support Home Farm Milk http://www.thehomefarmer.co.uk/p/homepage.html

where milk comes in a glass bottle - attractive, reusable and environmentally friendly.

On top of this we recycle all plastic, glass, tin, paper & card in the normal way.

Upper Swaledale Holidays is a very small fish in a very large pond but we try to do our bit. Small steps #greenfootprint #goinggreen #green