It’s important that our traditions continue, not only to perpetuate our heritage but also to bring communities together. We live very differently from our ancestors, as our world is a smaller place and our daily life moves on much quicker than theirs ever did. So I enjoy the fact that my village of Long Preston in Ribblesdale takes a breather from today’s hectic pace and continues to celebrate May Day on the village green around the Maypole (not the pub, an actual pole – although the Maypole pub does a roaring trade, too). It’s one of the few times of the year when locals get together and seeing the children carrying on such an ancient custom is heartwarming. Well done to the volunteers who keep this tradition going.

I often envy retired folk. I had to pop over to Bolton Abbey last week to take some photographs – it’s a lovely place but one I tend to avoid at weekends, Bank Holidays and during the summer holidays. However, this time it was tranquil with just a few retired types enjoying their rewards after their lives of toil (well, that’s what they told me). The priory ruins looked magnificent with a parade of daffodils encircling the stonework while further upstream at the Strid the cool water was busy chuckling its way through the rocks. I could have stayed there all day but you people insist on having your Dalesman on time.

At least I had a little taste of spring last Friday, even if it was a tad ‘artificial’, with a visit to Harrogate Flower Festival. I believe it rained every day during the festival but it was nevertheless spectacular and well worth the trip. My journey home to Ribblesdale was a treat too as I took the long way round to travel on some of my favourite Yorkshire roads.

I returned through Nidderdale via Pateley Bridge and Greenhow where the views whatever the weather are fabulous and an example of how nature can take over after Man has left his mark on the landscape through industry. The road down to Grassington is always a delight and from there I cut through Grassington Wood to Conistone and Kilnsey in Wharfedale and on to the delightful village of Arncliffe where even on a grey day the bright red post box contrasting against the greystone cottages and the village green reminds you just where you are.

Joining Littondale with Ribblesdale is the dramatic Alpine-style pass which takes in Darnbrook House where drivers are greeted by anxious and excited dogs as you open and close the road gate. It’s then on to Home Farm to catch enticing glimpses of Malham Tarn before leaving lonely Capon Hall and heading down to Cowside Farm with its mix of working and dilapidated buildings. North Ribblesdale came into view in early evening light as I passed Winskill and low-geared it down the hairpin to Langcliffe and Settle. In a few short hours I’ve met some enthusiastic Yorkshire plantsmen and women, seen and smelled stunning spring flowers, travelled through four wonderful Dales and witnessed rural Yorkshire life in all its glory and contrasts… and they pay me for doing this?

Given the temperature outside it’s hard to imagine that our May magazine is due out this week. The birds are scoffing the food from the bird feeder in my, er, ‘garden’ quicker than I can get up the ladder to refill it. The cat, reluctant to venture out into the cold, growls at the birds from the inside window ledge and looks at me contemptuously for giving them priority in the feeding line. He doesn’t realise how lucky he is, of course, having no need to spend his days and nights searching for food to feed a young family and protecting them against predators. Travelling round the county recently I seem to have seen far more dead animals on the roads than normal. And a bigger range of victims, too. We’re used to rabbits being caught in the headlights or grouse caught in two minds about which way to to go, but over the last few weeks I’ve also seen badgers, foxes, stoats, hares and even a red squirrel on the road between Threshfield and Kettlewell… I do hope the reds are successful in colonising Grassington Woods and surrounding areas. There’s not a great deal we can do to stop deaths on the roads but we can do something about maintaining hedges and walls and planting trees to help establish animal highways. But right now there’s a blue tit perched by the empty bird feeder, complaining bitterly about the poor service at this particular takeaway so I’d better go get the ladders out again…

I’ve visited two very different properties this week, both now uninhabited any many miles apart but long ago they were linked. The buildings were once occupied by very different kinds of people, too, whose lifetsyles were a world apart.

My trip to Jervaulx Abbey, near Leyburn, offered a glimpse of how the Cistercian monks lived nearly a thousand years ago in that tranquil, fertile valley before the abbey was ripped apart by ‘Old Henery’ who decided the monks posed too much of a threat. Now privately owned it is superbly kept for us to enjoy for a voluntary donation which I am more than happy to part with.

The monks from here and Fountains Abbey owned land some thirty miles away in Upper Wharfedale, pastures they used for summer grazing for their cattle who would have been led there over the packhorse routes before being taken to market.

In remote areas, like Langstrothdale, would have been small farms housing a family or cowman to look after the cattle. From this basic agricultural system grew the second of the properties I saw this week – Cowside Farm, a derelict property now owned by the National Trust but standing somewhat forlornly above the infant Wharfe just east of Beckermonds.

The boarded-up farmhouse with barn and outbuildings, typical of Yorkshire rural architecture of the 17th century, is now the subject of an appeal by the Landmark Trust who wish to bring it back to life. I’ll be explaining more in June’s magazine.

I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve visited Malham… walking, camping, playing the tourist and even working. But I never tire of it. I was there again early doors on Sunday. I can recommend driving over the old road from Settle to Kirkby Malham. As you head down to the village the whole of Malhamdale opens up like a great outdoor theatre with the cove waiting for the ‘house full’ sign to go up before opening its dramatic curtains.

One or two Yorkshiremen had beaten me there as there were only a couple of free parking spots still available. But hey, even I don’t begrudge paying at Malham. In most other touristy spots there’d be turnstiles and ‘credit cards accepted’ signs at entrances to the cove, Gordale, Janet’s Fosse and the Tarn.

After a short stroll my mission was to follow (in the car) a cycling route I took well over 30 years ago when I was more than a little bit fitter. Having cycled up from the Heavy Woollen District we’d visited Malham and headed on towards Penyghent with the aim of camping at Halton Gill.

It’s a glorious road up above the cove, looking back down on the patchwork of grey and green. On Sunday as I drove by Capon Hall farm above Malham a lonely old horse stood like some city centre statue, gaining as much shelter as it could. Although the sun shone brightly the temperature was zero and the wind added quite a few minuses to the score. The road runs beneath the unwelcoming, soggy mass of Fountain’s Fell before dropping down to join the road from Stainforth to Halton Gill.

All those years ago we’d cycled along here to Dale Head, where the Pennine Way crosses the road, but decided it was getting too dark to risk heading down to Halton Gill so we asked the farmer if we could camp in a field.

We looked around for a bit of flat ground and started to pitch. The farmer watched us stupid townies for a while before offering a word of advice: “Ah wudn’t set it up the’er if Ah were you. Tha’ll end up i’ Ribblesdale toneet.”

He reckoned the wind was picking up and we were planning to pitch right in its path. We moved the tent round the back of a barn, and boy was he right about the wind. Never slept a wink but on opening the tent door in the morning we looked out to see the nose end of Penyghent staring us in the face on a glorious clear morning just like on Sunday.

I can’t pretend otherwise – I AM a grumpy old man. Ask my son, ask my friends, ask my work colleagues. But like all grumpy old men, I know I’m right to be grumpy so don’t try to prove me wrong. There are some things which get the veins in my neck standing out further than others and none more so than the problem of litter, especially in the countryside.

This last week I took a few days holiday and during the four hours of good weather during the whole week I had a little trip up to Sedbergh and the Howgills (if it’s raining I can mooch around the bookshops, if it’s fine I can take in the hills and stunning views in that glorious border area). In the end I managed both but became enraged (again) on coming across cans, a Coke bottle and several chocolate wrappers while only a couple of hundred feet up on the hills. It’s bad enough some moron dropping their garbage in the town streets but to take it miles into the countryside and carry it up a hill before thoughtlessly leaving it in such a beautiful spot is just beyond comprehension. Grr.

Author and CPRE president Bill Bryson is as grumpy as I am about the mindless depositing of litter in the countryside and has helped set in motion a new campaign called Stop the Drop… for details visit www.cpre.org.uk

Don’t all laugh at once, but British Summertime’s just around the corner. I’m seriously thinking about changing the magazine’s policy regarding ’seasonal’ photography. We bring you the traditional photographs in December because it snows at Christmas doesn’t it? By Easter we’re happily preparing the garden and enjoying the spring sunshine and we brighten your day by offering you a cheerful daffodil and bright blue sky composition on our cover.

Like most Yorkshire folk I woke up to a few inches of snow on Easter Sunday. New born lambs in a neighbour’s field were almost covered and the church welcomed Easter worshippers despite looking more like a Christmas card scene.

Thankfully Easter won’t fall so early again in my lifetime but it would be a shame if my son was to grow old with only some ancient Dalesman cover to remind what a ‘real’ Christmas was like.

The picture shows St Mary’s at Long Preston in Ribblesdale… on Easter Sunday.

Had a walk around Thruscross Reservoir in the Washburn Valley last week and I’ve got to say I always find reservoirs, especially where villages, buildings and a way of life have been drowned, just a little bit eerie.

To see roads, farm tracks, walls and even fields disappear into the dark waters is surreal. Fortunately for wimpish little me, the water was high so I didn’t have to witness the sight of a spire of some long forgotten church or the chimney stack of a poor parishioner’s 200-year home jutting out of the blackness.

What’s worse, back in the mid-sixties they had to dig up all the bodies from the churchyard and plant them somewhere else. Ugh.

There’s a section of an old textile mill edging into the water and it feels strange that a place that once contained so much energy and life should now be in such a sorry state. I wonder why the builders of the reservoir found it necessary to leave this remnant?

Thankfully there was lots of wildlife to keep my mind otherwise occupied… greylag geese honked and barked to each other across the shores, birds sang in the woods and rabbits scattered on my approach. Nature has always supplied something more palatable than Man ever could.

When you really want to see Yorkshire’s dales in all their magnificence, to feel their power and understand their moods, then head out on days like last Sunday. Forget those blue-sky, fluffy-cloud days. To witness the Dales known by generations of Dalesfolk you need quick-changing skies which light up the hills and darken the valleys; wind sweeping the harsh moors and distant short, sharp rain colouring the scene. So it was as I headed up England’s highest surfaced road between Hawes and Kettlewell. Leaving Wensleydale behind the mass of Dodd Fell loomed up ahead. At the road’s highest point near Fleet Moss the walls, bent and punished by years of high winds, reflected man’s inability to control the elements. At a height of 580m here, the views are amazing especially in this changing light. Distant Penyghent looks atmospheric with a cloud cap and undulating wild moor between, all shades of browns and greys. Ashley Jackson would have had been in raptures over these moody moors and skies. I’d just been down to Semerwater where the weather had also painted a much different scene from the last time I visited the area. Choppy waters in sombre surroundings, water lapping onto the road meant no picknicking tourists, no giddy dogs pointlessly retrieving sticks from the lake – just a busy farmer oblivious to the conditions, content with his lot.

A friend asked me to try his home-made rhubarb wine at the weekend. Is it Yorkshire tusky,’ I asked. Silence accompanied by puzzled looks. Well, he is from the deep south (Nottingham) and my way of integrating him into the community is to throw in the odd Yorkshire term now and then for educational reasons. However, at the same time I also flummoxed a Yorkshirewoman with the expression. I presume tusky is a localised term for rhubarb and I remember as a youngster lifting the odd piece of rhubarb from the fields between Batley and Morley – goodness knows why, because it always left me with some degree of tummy trouble. Does anyone know why it’s called tusky? Wakefield holds its annual Food, Drink and Rhubarb Festival this Friday and Saturday… maybe I’ll discover the answer there.