title: Road to the Dales: The Story of a Yorkshire Lad
author:  Gervase Phinn 
description: Gervase Phinn is a teacher, freelance lecturer, author, poet, school inspector, educational consultant and visiting professor of education. For fourteen years he taught in a range of schools, then acted as General Advisor for Language Development in Rotherham before moving on to North Yorkshire, where he spent ten years as a school inspector. He holds five fellowships, honorary doctorates from Hull, Leicester and Sheffield Hallam universities, and is a patron of a number of children's charities and organizations.
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  Ivanhoe
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Walter Scott
  
  
  CHAPTER I
  
  
    
  Thus communed these; while to their lowly dome,  
  The full-fed swine return'd with evening home;  
  Compell'd, reluctant, to the several sties,  
  With din obstreperous, and ungrateful cries.  
  Pope's Odyssey.  
  
  In that pleasant district of merry England which is watered by the river Don,
  there extended in ancient times a large forest, covering the greater part of
  the beautiful hills and valleys which lie between Sheffield and the pleasant
  town of Doncaster. The remains of this extensive wood are still to be seen at
  the noble seats of Wentworth, of Warncliffe Park, and around Rotherham. Here
  haunted of yore the fabulous Dragon of Wantley; here were fought many of the
  most desperate battles during the Civil Wars of the Roses; and here also
  flourished in ancient times those bands of gallant outlaws, whose deeds have
  been rendered so popular in English song.
  
  Such being our chief scene, the date of our story refers to a peri