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Rough weather, difficult stock and skeletal profits are part of farming life in the beautiful hills
It is good that Adrian Edmondson's engaging stomp round the Yorkshire Dales on ITV makes plain that a chocolate-box landscape is not always an easy place to live. Rough weather, difficult stock and skeletal profits are part of farming life in the beautiful hills. All manner of logistical problems beset other ways of earning a living and can even deter the affluent retired, whose energy and civic-mindedness often help revive flagging communities. A case in point has been the prospect of the Yorkshire Dales national park authority moving out of Hudson House in Reeth, the little capital of upper Swaledale where "real" life still continues among the holiday homes. An end to the authority's contract threatened the future of the whole building, an inspired conversion of Reeth's former Barclays bank which opened in 2003 and houses a whole range of crucial services – police, local council representatives, a Citizens Advice bureau. Now the dale can breathe easily again. The authority has decided to find money from elsewhere to keep its base and information centre open, albeit reducing spending by £8,000. Not an easy call, for the park must make cuts of £1,900,000, or 31% of its budget, in the next four years. But, as with so many similar dilemmas, the rethink will prompt a tackling of the shortfall of customers at Reeth, which has performed less well than elsewhere. A good start will be the Swaledale Festival – also run from Hudson House – which fills the valley from 28 May to 11 June.
