The Folly of the Austwick Carles

Long before road signs marked the way and mobile phones pierced the quiet of the dales, the village of Austwick sat cradled in the limestone hills of Yorkshire, its people as weathered and rooted as the stones that lined their fields. They were carles plainspoken, stubborn, and gifted with a kind of logic that didn’t always serve them well. Among their tales, none is so often muttered with a chuckle or a shiver as that of the pool outside the village, where laughter turned to legend, and a foolish phrase became a fateful proverb. For in Austwick, they still say it with a knowing smile: "T’ best’s at t’ bottom.