Tim Laurie’s quest to find the source of the River Swale

Looking up a steep, rough grassy and mossy hillside to a horizon with a bright sky. In the foreground is just visible a small pool feeding a narrow flow of water running downhill through the grass. Above the pool stands a woman in a red anorak and with a back-pack. She is looking at the moss and some small yellow flowers that are dotted around the area while she is writing in a book that she holds in her left hand. — Botanist Linda Robinson recording the vegetation at the spring source of the River Swale. See link below to Geographical category PDF, record 835, image 3.

SWAAG president Tim Laurie created a photographic record of the geological and natural-history sights he encountered on three journeys undertaken with friends on an eventually successful quest to find the source of the River Swale.

The record is worthy of the following additional background information. Traditionally, the three great rivers of Swale, Ure, and Eden are said all to spring from the high slopes of the same mountain, called Hugh Seat, on the watershed between Yorkshire and old Westmorland.

However, on the basis that the source of a river should be at the highest point and farthest from the river’s end, Tim Laurie identified the true source of the Swale as the highest spring feeding the tributary of Uldale Beck, which he found on the neighbouring and slightly higher watershed/ border mountain of High Seat.

He recorded the source at 690 metres above sea level, being one metre higher than the summit of Hugh Seat. For the photographic account of Tim’s journeys, see Geographical category PDF and scroll to record number 835 (27 Photographs). For one additional photograph, scroll to record number 361.

For information and photographs relating to the remarkable landscape of remnant peat islands close to the head of Uldale Beck, see this website menu Nature/Moorland Peat.