The Walk to Falling Foss

The November fogs cleared just a little yesterday to reveal a beautifully autumnal Yorkshire and we took on a short walk along the valley of the Little Beck river, a tributary of the Esk, to find the Falling Foss waterfall. However, when M and I go away we seem to have developed a tradition for finding odd and/or ruined buildings in isolated places, and half-way up the valley on the way to the waterfall we came to this fantastic folly, carved from a single boulder and with the initials GC 1790 above the door: "The Hermitage" is carved on the side of the single-room rock. There's nothing much on the Internet to tells us any more but it does seem that we missed a bit of a trick and that on top of hermitage are two wishing chairs, also carved from the rock, one to sit in and make the wish, the second to sit in so that the wish comes true...