Nov 3, 2009 – Stone farm buildings and dry stone walls in Swaledale, Yorkshire, UK – Steve Allen / Getty Images

• Why was the bloodiest battle on English soil fought here?
  It had something to do with Roses
• This region produces wool, cheese, coal, steel, and other important commodities.
  But people get most excited about the puppies
• Can you imagine this land being ruled by someone named Eric Bloodaxe?
  He’s not the only surprising person to have lived here
• Remember Emily Brontë’s tragic love story, with Heathcliff and Catherine and the drama of the moors?
  It took place in this county

Swaledale is one of the northernmost dales in the Yorkshire Dales National Park in Northern England. It is the dale—valley—of the River Swale on the east side of the Pennines in North Yorkshire.

Swaledale is a typical limestone Yorkshire dale, with its narrow valley-bottom road, green meadows and fellside fields, white sheep and white stone walls on the glacier-formed valley sides, and darker moorland skyline. The upper parts of the dale are particularly striking because of its large old limestone field barns and its profusion of wild flowers. The latter are thanks to the return to the practice of leaving the cutting of grass for hay or silage until wild plants have had a chance to seed. Occasionally visible from the valley bottom road are the slowly-fading fellside scars of the 18th and 19th century lead mining industry. Ruined stone mine buildings remain, taking on the same colours as the landscape into which they are crumbling.

Swaledale is home to many small but beautiful waterfalls, such as Richmond Falls, Kisdon Force and Catrake Force.

Swaledale starts to the east of Nine Standards Rigg, the prominent ridge with nine ancient tall cairns on the Cumbria–Yorkshire boundary which forms part of the main East–West Watershed of Northern England. To the west lies Kirkby Stephen and the Westmoreland Limestone Plateau.

The moors on the eastern flank of the Rigg’s moorland become more and more concave as they descend, to become the narrow valley sides of upper Swaledale at the small village of Keld. From there, the valley runs briefly south then turns east at Thwaite to broaden progressively as it passes Muker, Gunnerside and Reeth. The Pennine valley ends at the market town of Richmond, where an important medieval castle still watches the important ford from the top of a cliff. Below Richmond, the valley sides flatten out and the Swale flows across lowland farmland to meet the Ure just east of Boroughbridge at a point known as Swale Nab. The Ure becomes the Ouse, and eventually (on merging with the Trent) the Humber.

From the North, Arkengarthdale and its river the Arkle Beck join Swaledale at Reeth. To the south, Wensleydale, home of the famous Wensleydale cheese, runs parallel with Swaledale. The two dales are separated by a ridge including Great Shunner Fell, and joined by the road over Buttertubs Pass.