Reblogged from Walking the Old Ways:

A Neolithic stone circle, a Bronze Age burial cairn used again in the Dark Ages, and a Romano-British defensive settlement – centuries of history in a walk of several miles from the village of Orton in the Westmorland Dales.

Confusingly, the Westmorland Dales are part of the Yorkshire Dales National Park, though not actually in Yorkshire. Not even in the ancient county of Westmorland, which in the 1970s was dragged unwillingly into the new county of Cumbria. I do wish the politicos had left our old counties alone!

Snatching a rare dry morning off from the almost continuous rain of the past few months, we set off from Orton taking the old road leading to Kirkby Stephen – once a busy highway in times past, but now with only the occasional motor car.

Continue reading at Walking the Old Ways