Economy
A lack of investment in the Dales farms has led to problems related to more intensive farming methods. The loss of unproductive farms has led to land being merged with adjoining or nearby businesses, and an increase in second home ownership by people from outside the area. There are fewer people looking after the land with labour-intensive jobs such as sheepherding, rebuilding walls and barns, maintaining woodland no longer taking place. The increase in sheep-ranching has gone hand in hand with reduction in the number of cattle.
Lead mining was once the main industry in Wharfedale. From the seventeenth century to the late nineteenth it employed hundreds of men and boys, exploiting the veins in the limestone at Greenhow, Hebden, Grassington, Linton and Conistone, Appletreewick and elsewhere. The heaps of mining waste remain, contaminated with lead, and on which little will grow. The few plants that will are known as 'lead plants' such as spring sandwort and alpine penny-cress.
Tourism is big part of the rural economy in Wharfedale and there are many short, mid and long distance walks, with clear waymarkers. There are also other outdoor activities such as rock climbing, most notably at Kilnsey Crag, and canoeing. Other activities include cycling, mountain biking, horse riding and caving. The following Long Distance Walks pass near or over the river:
- Dales Way (follows the river valley from Beckermonds to Ilkley)
- Lady Anne's Way (enters the river valley near Hubberholme and leaves to the west of Bolton Abbey)
- Inn Way to the Yorkshire Dales (part of walk from Grassington to Buckden)
- The Way of the Roses (part of the cycle route from Appletreewick to Thorpe)
Read more about this topic: River Wharfe
Famous quotes containing the word economy:
“Even the poor student studies and is taught only political economy, while that economy of living which is synonymous with philosophy is not even sincerely professed in our colleges. The consequence is, that while he is reading Adam Smith, Ricardo, and Say, he runs his father in debt irretrievably.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“The aim of the laborer should be, not to get his living, to get “a good job,” but to perform well a certain work; and, even in a pecuniary sense, it would be economy for a town to pay its laborers so well that they would not feel that they were working for low ends, as for a livelihood merely, but for scientific, or even moral ends. Do not hire a man who does your work for money, but him who does it for love of it.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Wise men read very sharply all your private history in your look and gait and behavior. The whole economy of nature is bent on expression. The tell-tale body is all tongues. Men are like Geneva watches with crystal faces which expose the whole movement.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)