INTO THE DALES - A Northern Coast to Coast Walk: From St Bees to Robin Hood's Bay - page 71

Go right through Hartley for a while to a path on the left (signposted
'Hikers and Walkers to Nine Standards and Whitby'), descending to cross
Hartley Beck by a footbridge, Between Kirkby Stephen and Keld the walk
crosses the watershed of Britain, a significance greater in fact than on the
ground. and then onto the road climbing to the vicinity of Hartley Quarry.
Continue with the fell road, climbing steadily towards Fell House farm, a
rather isolated outpost, where at last the gradient eases. The road runs on
to its demise at a fork, where the way follows the left branch, a bridleway
(signposted 'Nine Standards Rigg'), rising through a gate and onto Hartley
Fell.
Continuing as a broad track the onward route is never in doubt, and soon
joins company with a wall (on the right). Before long the wall bears south-
east and then south near the point where Faraday Gill flows down from the
slopes of Nine Standards Rigg. Faraday Gill commemorates the local family whose
offspring, Michael (1791-1867), was the physical scientist who discovered electromag-
netic induction and other important electrical and magnetic phenomena.
Continue for a short distance until a Land Rover track dips down to the
left to cross the gill at a ford. Follow this track on the other side for a short
distance and then, as it moves away to the left, look for a narrow trod re-
turning towards the gill, which is now followed along its true right bank.
After a while the gill becomes more deeply incised, and offers a mo-
ment's diversion in a series of miniature cascades. Shortly, the route ar-
rives at a walled enclosure, where the gill needs to be crossed, then con-
tinues ahead to a prominent cairn, not unlike those on the summit beyond.
As the cairn is reached, so the Nine Standards come into view on the
skyline ahead, for which you should now head, taking care to avoid a few
wet (and deep) natural drainage courses.
NINE STANDARDS RIGG
Arrival at Nine Standards is a moment of some occasion. It lies on the watershed of
Britain, that great north-south divide sending waters one way to the Irish Sea, and the
other to the North Sea, though there are times and rainy days when you gain the dis-
tinct impression its sends them nowhere at all!
No one has yet come up with any historical fact about the origins or purpose of the
Nine Standards. They stand on the former county boundary between Westmorland and
the North Riding of Yorkshire, and, more than likely, their origin derives from that sig-
nificance, though one fanciful notion suggests they were built to persuade marauding
Scots that an English army was camped up there, which as Neil Hanson points out