Previous Challenge Entry (Level 4 – Masters)
Topic: WALL (02/17/22)
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TITLE: Discoveries in the Dales | Previous Challenge Entry
By Noel Mitaxa
02/24/22 -
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But to cruise the Dales in summer is to experience a contrasting treat of gentle, undulating greenness; a panorama of scattered villages, narrow roads edged with walled fields and farms with stone cottages, large barns, and small sheds.
And either season will plunge us into the warm nostalgia of animal vet James Herriot’s books, and the television series “All Creatures Great and Small,” that was based on them.
Our trip traversed the Dales National Park, where at its southern edge we came across the market town of Skipton and its beautifully maintained twelfth century Castle. We felt it would be well worth a tour. After all, who hasn’t explored or maybe dreamed of the romance of knights, damsels, jesters, jousting, feasting and chivalry…
The entrance was easy to find, thanks to the massive, rounded towers on either side. “Why are these towers round?” I asked the guide.
He smiled in explanation, “It’s a ninety-degree adaptation of a Roman arch,” before throwing more light into my mind. “Just like the stones in their arches reinforce each other, history proved for our armies that circular walls and corners could deflect anything that was thrown at them much better than right angle corners ever could.”
Touring through the vast rooms, tiny cells, tunnels, and towers inside the castle compound within the castle compound, I sensed a definite need for any kind of central heating; and the clear challenge that such an addition would involve.
Then, looking down from the turrets that protected guards and soldiers defending against attacks by armies who were intent on its destruction, I noticed extra stones extending out from the base of the walls. Having earlier seen similar additions to walls inside the Old City at Jerusalem, I’d learned that these additions had come courtesy of medieval Crusaders. With no further explanation back then, it was time to ask our guide.
Warming to the opportunity, he took us over to the turrets, from where we looked down again. “Those angled stones are called the skirts. Just imagine for a moment how accurate you’d have to be with any stones or boiling oil that you were dropping on your enemies. But these skirts allowed whatever you threw to shatter or splatter out horizontally with a much wider impact and cause much more damage to them and to their equipment!”
But then he revealed a lighter, more modern note to these skirts…
“Many people could live inside castles, but not everyone. Many others lived outside castle walls – or castle’s skirts, which is why we now use the term ‘outskirts’ for outlying areas of our cities.”
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What lovely images and information.
Blessings
before throwing more light into my mind. with icy winds scouring the slopes to find fresh targets for the snow that blankets the fields, farms, and secluded hamlets with a sound-deadening whiteness.”... “before throwing more light into my mind.” And you certainly threw a lot of light into my mind. Very “enlightening” article. Well done.