Feeling the force of nine waterfalls

12:33pm Thursday 27th March 2008

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These days, Goathland is associated with the long-running TV series based on Peter Walker's books on police in earlier times.

A huge increase of visitors has taken place since it began; hoping to come on a day when filming is taking place. If not, at least they will have seen the background of the films. At the weekends, particularly, the place is crowded.

But there is, and always has been much more to Goathland than this. The Roman road, many beautiful walks, in deep valleys, or over heathery moors, the old railway, the present railway station on the newer, still seasonally active railway, with milkcans and luggage to give an old time look, a tea room, several cafes in the village and two or three hotels .

More widely spread around the village there are no less than nine waterfalls, all I understand, the result of a local intrusion of igneous rock known as the Whin Sill, plus glacial action and floods at the end of the glacial era. All these waterfalls lie within a radius of five or six miles of Goathland.

The area all around was settled by Scandinavians and wherever Norsemen came, there seems a cross of 'Fosses' or 'Forces' derived from the Scandinavia word for waterfall 'Voss'. Perhaps they tended to be drawn to an area wher there are falls? At any rate, they seem t have felt that waterfalls deserve a name more than other early people have done.

The Scandinavians, and indeed their descendants, to this day don't seem to have been particularly imaginative, being perhaps of a more practical nature. But how right most of these names sound! Well suited to their rugged terrain.

Nelly Ayre Foss, Malin Foss, now changed to Mallyan Foss, Keld Scarr Foss, Water Ark Foss, Thomasin Foss, Falling Foss - you could make a poem just out of their names, full of the rush of clear water, leaping between knobbly rocks, padded with tufts of heather or bilberry, guarded by alders with their woody little cones .

Three other falls, Mill Foss, Mill Scar Foss and Walker Mill Foss were probably more recently named, indicating that their rather modest power was harnessed by machinery. But there is no sign of machinery now; they are more likely to be the home of a dipper or a fierce little wren.

Nelly Ayre Foss and Thomasin Foss may sound softer, more feminine, but this is an illusion. They are Amazons !

Craggiest and most powerful of the nine complex falls, with mossy boulders and scoured out potholes, water rushing relentlessly from dark lip to dark lap.

Thomasin may or may not be named after a woman, but Nelly Ayre Foss bears no reference to a female. It is thought to mean simply 'the lowere flat land'.

Mallyan Spout ought to resort to its old name. It isn't really a spout, but a slender, dreamy thread of what looks more like vapour than water, hanging waveringly from its tall, green shrouded cliff.

You can feel the fine cold spray of it sometimes, but its voice is a whisper. It' a wraith of a fall, difficult to reach too, first down a steep slope then scrambling over big boulders along the river. As for Falling Foss, the name is a puzzle. Tautological: meaning, as it now stands, falling waterfall. I am no philologist, but I have wondered, ever since I saw Voring Voss years ago, far away in the Norwegian mountains, if there could be any connection. Voring Voss is famous, the highest fall in Europe, Falling Foss very much its little sister; but the names echo. Could it be that some Norseman, sick for home, named it in memory of its big Norwegian brother ?

Could it be that descendents, most of his speech forgotten, distorted the words to F lling Foss, forgetting that Voss mean a fall?

It is a pretty name, for a pretty fall, in a quiet and dreamy spot. The nearby car park is sensitively placed, up a hill, a quarter of a mile or so away. There is no sound of cars when you have scrambled down the steep slope to the fall. It is s right that you have to walk there, to linger and as Wordsworth recommended, let the beauty born of murmuring sound pass into your face (one hopes).

A year ago I visited Falling Foss with my daughter and grandson - perhaps fo the last time. Even a quarter mile of rough steep track is nearly too much fo me these days, but most of these falsl have not even a car park as near as that .

Most must be approached over moor lands - quite lengthy tracks. Long may it be so.

I suppose Water Ark Foss, which can be seen over a bridge near Goathland station, is the nearest of the nine to a road - the most likely one I shall ever see again.