You drop down off the moor into a huddle of grey stone cottages, and suddenly the air is full of the sound of falling water. This is Keld — a name that simply means "spring" in the old Norse tongue — and it sits, remarkably, at the very heart of your journey. You are roughly halfway between the two seas. And here, at this one lonely spot, the Coast to Coast crosses the great Pennine Way.
Keld is a tiny place, a knot of stone houses at the head of Swaledale, wrapped in some of the finest waterfall country in England. Its Norse name is a clue to its age: Vikings settled and farmed these dales more than a thousand years ago, and the word for a spring stuck to the village and never left.
For the walker, Keld is a landmark of pure geography — roughly the midpoint of the whole route, and the single point where the two great long-distance paths of northern England touch and cross. Just east of the village, where the Coast to Coast meets the Pennine Way, East Gill Force tumbles in bright steps into the young River Swale.
And within a short walk the river throws itself over one waterfall after another — Wain Wath Force, Catrake Force, and the fine two-tiered Kisdon Force — as it carves a deep, wooded limestone gorge between the great whaleback hills of Kisdon and Rogan's Seat. Few short stretches of any river in England hold so many falls, and after heavy rain they run brown and thunderous, filling the whole dale with sound.
Look, first, at East Gill Force, right beside the path where the two trails meet — a lovely stepped fall dropping into the Swale, the classic Keld picture. Second, walk up to Wain Wath Force, a broad white curtain of water below the pale limestone cliff of Cotterby Scar. Third, seek out Catrake Force, tucked just below the village, half hidden in its wooded cleft.
Fourth, find Kisdon Force, the grandest of them all — two tiers of water crashing through a rocky gorge, thunderous after rain. And fifth, lift your eyes to the hills that frame it all: Kisdon, the strange isolated dome that the river must curve around, and the broad dark mass of Rogan's Seat rising to the north, with the old stone barns and drystone walls of Swaledale patterning the valley below.
Think of the Norse folk who named this place. When they came up these dales, they found a cold, clear spring — a keld — and made it the centre of their small world, building, farming, enduring the hard winters at the head of the valley. A thousand years on, their word is still the name on the map, and the spring still rises, and the Swale still runs its ancient course over the falls.
Few places on the whole walk feel so timeless: a handful of grey roofs, a chapel, the encircling hills, and always, day and night, the steady sound of falling water in the dale. This is river country, and the rocks beside the falls can be wet and slippery — so admire them from the path and the safe viewpoints, and keep well back from the edge above rushing water, especially when the river is high.
From Keld the Coast to Coast turns east once more and follows the Swale down the dale, through Reeth and on towards Marrick, where an ancient flight of worn stone steps climbs through the woods to a medieval nunnery. Take one last look up the green head of Swaledale, listen a moment longer to the falls, and walk on into the second half of your journey. Walk safe.
