Catrigg Force, Stainforth

click photo to enlarge
"Deep down on your left is the partly wooded defile in which runs the turbulent beck that riots among the wild rocks and cliffs of Catterick. Follow the glen up along the top until there are signs of its disappearance among the tracts of heather. A little below this point you will come to the highest and grandest of the waterfalls, which, after a flood, makes a sublime sight, hardly to be matched in Yorkshire, and that is saying a great deal. The water comes down a lofty ravine, thickly clothed with trees and flowering shrubs, (amongst the latter the giant rose-bay, the finest of the willow-herbs, gives an effective colour), and falls in two magnificent leaps into a shadowy pool below, running then onward among immense boulders to fall again and again in lesser but still beautiful cascades."
from "The Craven and North-West Yorkshire Highlands" by Harry Speight (1892)

The description above, apart from the presence of summer flowers, is still a good description of Catrigg Force which we visited recently. When I was growing up in the area people called the waterfall both Catterick Force (or Foss) and Catrigg Force. Harry Speight uses the former. So does "Otley's Guide: Concise Description of the English Lakes" (1823), a Midland Railways poster of 1909 advertising Settle, and a postcard of the waterfall dated 1912. However, a map of 1896 prefers Catrigg Force, and so do subsequent Ordnance Survey maps. Interestingly the present day wooden finger post near the waterfall is marked Catrigg Foss. It's common to find "Force and Foss" used interchangeably for Dales waterfalls for reasons that I discussed in this post about Stainforth Force. However, it isn't common for the main name to differ in quite the way that happens in this instance. There is a suggestion that Catterick comes from "cataract", and yet Catrigg is the name of a nearby area of moorland from which Catrigg Barn and Catrigg Beck (the stream) take their names. The word "rigg" comes from the Scandinavian and means " a ridge or cultivated strip of ground",and that seems appropriate. It's a puzzle that I must look into a little more!

I'm not a great fan of massively blurred water of the sort that enthusiast photographers seem keen to use in their photographs of waterfalls. However, I did take a couple with some blur, of which this is one. I used a fairly slow shutter speed and put the camera on my monopod and wedged it in a crevice to the maintain sharpness of the trees and rocks.

photograph and text © Tony Boughen

Camera: Sony RX100
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 11.3mm (30mm - 35mm equiv.)
F No: f11
Shutter Speed: 1/3 sec
ISO: 125
Exposure Compensation: -1.0 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Froth, waterfalls and wild swimming

click photo to enlarge
Recently, as our walk took us past the waterfall that is Scaleber Force near Settle, I took a few shots of Stockdale Beck as it cascaded down the rock face. Strong sunlight didn't help when it came to getting the sort of shot I wanted, and the small offering today is the best of the very few photographs that I took. I'd gone down the sides of the ravine alone and my wife stayed at the top on a handily sited bench. While she was there a van stopped on the nearby road and some people came to ask her if she knew of anywhere nearby for "wild swimming". She mentioned Stainforth Force and they said that was their next destination.

When she recounted that conversation I was transported back to my childhood swimming in the River Ribble at Settle. We never called it wild swimming then; it was just swimming plain and simple. Since there was no purpose-built covered pool in the small market town (there is now) many local children, myself included, taught themselves to swim in the rock pools and deeper stretches of the river. We had a number of favourite spots. Probably the most popular for younger children was the stretch between the weir and the stone-built road bridge. Older kids preferred the longer, uninterrupted and more secluded stretch above the weir, downstream from Shed Mill which was called "six foot" in reference to its alleged depth at this point. A third location that attracted younger children was the deeper area of water below Queen's Rock near King's Mill.

As chance would have it we later walked past this stretch of rapids that marks the point where one of the Craven Faults crosses the river. Looking down from the footbridge I noticed an accumulation of froth - probably natural though perhaps partly man-made - and I seized the opportunity for my second photograph of this subject. My first shot, which I posted on the blog, was taken at the previously mentioned Stainforth Force. The example at Queen's Rock attracted me for the way that the rocks interacted with the froth to make a pattern quite different from the one in my earlier shot.

None of the areas I mention above where I used to swim would be suitable for the "wild" swimmers of today. On the other hand, I'm not so sure the dark and deep waters of Stainforth Force are either.

photograph and text © Tony Boughen

Camera: Sony RX100
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 23.8mm (64mm - 35mm equiv.)
F No: f5.6
Shutter Speed: 1/1250
ISO: 125
Exposure Compensation:  -0.3 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Stainforth Force

click photo to enlarge

When I was young and growing up in the Yorkshire Dales one of the things that I found puzzling was the use of the words "force" and "foss" to describe waterfalls. In the area where I lived and roamed the Ordnance Survey map showed Scaleber Force, Stainforth Force, Catrigg Force and Janet's Foss. However, the precise nomenclature of the the map-makers wasn't observed by the locals, and foss and force were used interchangeably when speaking of these places. It was only when I was older and had some knowledge of the etymology of these and other words associated with landscape and settlements that I realised this didn't matter, and that our imprecision came from the English developments of the root Norse word.

Both "force" and "foss" come from the word that Norse settlers brought to England in the ninth century - "foss" or "fors".  In fact, the Norsemen who settled north west England were, in the main, Norwegians who came from earlier settlements in Ireland and the Isle of Man. This contrasts with the Norse settlers of eastern England who were mainly Danes (though with some Norwegians). These geographical and cultural differences can be plotted on maps using "test words" that are held to be specifically Norwegian: for example "brekka" (now "breck" meaning hill), "gil" (now "Gill" or "Ghyll" meaning ravine), or "slakki" (now the suffix "-slack" eg. Elslack). I'm not absolutely sure, but I think "foss and "force" are also of specifically Norwegian origin.

My photograph shows the River Ribble in spate at Stainforth Force at a point where it tumbles over steps of limestone into a very deep pool. I used my photographic assistant (aka my wife) as scale, human interest, a compositional element and because her bright red hat made for a sharp point of colour in an otherwise gree/brown/white scene.

photograph and text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Canon
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 35mm
F No: f8
Shutter Speed: 1/80
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation:  -0.33 EV
Image Stabilisation: On