Why I chose the Yorkshire Wolds
For a start, they're not far away. There's more to it than that though, of course…
The Yorkshire Wolds is a vast area of majestic high rolling hills. They stretch from the East Coast of Yorkshire to the Vale of York, 40 miles away (64 km).
The Yorkshire Wolds cover the top half of East Yorkshire, spreading into North Yorkshire a little too. Yorkshire is split into North (The largest county in the UK), West, South and the East Riding of Yorkshire. It's in the North of England (part of the UK).
Hills with curves to die for
At their highest, the Wolds rise to 656 feet (200 metres). Not that you'd ever know you were on a peak on these gracefully rounded hills.
They're not that high as hills go, but they are XL size (Extra large), even XXL. Broad and sweeping, they have a majestic scale that matches that of higher peaks in my view.
The curves you see in the Wolds landscape are sublime because of their big scale. These arcs give the area a softness. I don't want to say like pillows, but many of the shapes do have a similarity.
For an artist, these curves present a challenge. It's easy to end‑up with an ungainly line over such a length. Drawing a graceful, naturally asymmetric curve is quite a task, especially when it crosses a whole canvas.
You don't have to have read much on this website to know I love an artistic challenge. It's one of the reasons I chose the Yorkshire Wolds landscape for my project.
The dales of the wolds
Then there are the valleys, called Dales. Yes, there's 'The Dales' over to the West. They're a different landscape entirely (A future art project without a doubt).
'The Dales' translated strictly would be 'the valleys', because the word dale means valley. So it's perfectly logical that the hollows in the East Riding of Yorkshire are dales too.
These dales are glacial in origin, formed when the ice covering this part of the UK melted. The melt‑water shaped meandering valleys through the softly rounded uplands I've just described.
Some of these valleys are deep and steep‑sided, though they're nowhere near vertical. They always slope, and I've never seen any rocky outcrops, or any boulders of any size, interrupting the oddly consistent inclines.
The area sits on England's most northern arm of chalk. Chalk is porous and an easily eroded material, I understand (I'm no geologist).
There's a lack of rivers in the Wolds, even in the valley bottoms which are often completely dry. It's because of the chalk, and it also explains why the landscape is curves and slopes, rather than angles and flat slabs.
There's a magical softness and grace to the monumental Yorkshire Wolds, and this is at the heart of what beckoned me to them.