I’ve had ‘one of those weeks’ as far as driving on the narrow Yorkshire Dales roads goes. First of all, I tried to do a bit of exploring to the west, as I normally drive down the dales to the east as that’s the way to where I used to live on the North York Moors. So I’m usually going back to my old village, or to catch an East Coast Main Line train to London, or drive down the A1.

I hadn’t explored to the west at all, but in many ways the upper part of the dales have stronger links to the west than the east. The curlews come from the west when they migrate from Morecombe Bay and Ireland in the Spring; and the Vikings who colonised the dales came from the west, in contrast to those on the North York Moors who came from the east. So the dialects and traditions are subtly different.

I drove to the top of Swaledale and continued beyond the little village of Keld towards Kirby Stephen, over the moor with its tall black and white snow poles that guide the snow plough in winter, and into the village of Nateby. I saw a sign about road works, but didn’t pay it any mind as the road was open.

I had an enjoyable morning looking around Kirby Stephen with its Cumbrian architecture and interesting church, but by midday I was ready to head back to North Yorkshire. Except it wasn’t so easy. There were now road works on the bridge at Nateby and so I couldn’t get to the moor road. The road works people also had not told the stat nav people, so my stat nav couldn’t help with the detour either and I didn’t have a paper map in the car. 

In the end I went the only way I knew, which was over the A66 towards Scotch Corner and cutting over to go down Arkengarthdale. A detour of about 50 miles. I looked at a map afterwards and saw that there was a tiny lane called Tommy Road that I could have used to get to Pendragon Castle by way of Pudding Hill Howe and thence down Mallerstang and back to Buttertubs Pass. But it was the sort of road that you only knew if you knew it. If you see what I mean amongst the poetry of those wonderful names.

A few days later I was driving along another narrow dales road, listening to Radio 3 and admiring the meadows, yellow with buttercups. A white car came bowling towards me in the middle of the road and I pulled on to the verge to avoid a collision. BANG! My offside front wheel hit a rock.

Sure as eggs are eggs a hundred yards later the tyre was flat and I pulled into a layby and dug out the spare wheel and jack. By virtue of living on my own on the moor I’m generally a practical sort of person but for the life of me I couldn’t get the wheel off the hub. I called the AA, but of course it would be a couple of hours before anyone could get to this remote bit of the dale. So I consigned myself to a wait. Which wasn’t so bad as I was surrounded by meadows in flower and curlews calling.

But then a middle aged man came striding along the road and asked if I needed any help. He said he was doing the Coast to Coast long distance way, and I pointed out that he should have been on the other side of the river, to which he said his ‘phone stat nav had the path along this road. As it turned out this was lucky for me because he gave the stuck wheel a good kicking and it came off, and then very kindly put the spare tyre on. Apparently he worked in the motor trade and the general modus operandi was if something won’t come off, you either kick it or hit it with a hammer. I called the AA and said they weren’t needed any more, and went on my way.

The kindness of a stranger saved me a long wait, alleviated some frustration and prevented quite a lot of sense of despair about it ‘always happening to me’, so despite everything a ended up with a feeling of happiness. Has a stranger ever stepped in to give you a helping hand and made life a bit easier or safer for you?

Rowan on the Moor

A Moodscope member