HERRIOT'S ENGLAND : A HIKE THROUGH AUTHOR'S PET PLACES.

Byline: John Flinn San Francisco Examiner 

He didn't look menacing, exactly. But with hands the size of bear paws and eyes narrowed to seething slits, this barrel-chested Yorkshire farmer didn't look like someone you'd want to mess with.

He seemed to be silently fuming as he stood at the bar, picking at his plowman's lunch and sipping his pint of Yorkshire Best Bitter. He stared straight ahead, uninterested in the pub conversation. Everyone left him alone.

Suddenly there was a commotion at the back of the pub. The door flew open, and in bounded a black Labrador puppy, its tail wagging furiously. The scowling Yorkshireman put down his glass and slowly turned around. Then his eyes lit up with delight, and he dropped to his knees to let the little dog lick his face.

``Aye, Jesse, you're a little monkey, aren't ye,'' said the farmer. He picked up the puppy, tousled its ears and fed it a piece of bread.

If the scene seemed straight out of a James Herriot book, it should have. The country veterinarian was a frequent visitor to West Witton, this picturesque village in the Yorkshire Dales, and over the years he and his colleagues Siegfried and Tristan ministered to the lambs, calves and puppies of just about every farmer here at the Fox and Hounds pub.

Some of the characters in ``All Creatures Great and Small'' and Herriot's other books were based on the very people in this village - or, more likely, their parents. Across the street from the pub is the Wensleydale Heifer, the inn where Herriot and his wife liked to celebrate their wedding anniversaries.

Snaking up the hillside behind the village is the steep, winding road where, in one memorable story from ``All Creatures,'' the brakes on Herriot's car gave out.

Herriot, whose real name was James Alfred ``Alf'' Wight, died in February 1995. But to 50 million readers in 20 countries, his gentle and heartwarming stories of the tough-as-horseshoes farmers, their beloved animals and the gently beguiling landscape have painted a vivid picture of life in the Yorkshire Dales.

It was this vision of Yorkshire, gleaned from Herriot's books, that led my wife, Jeri, and me to this cozy little pub in Wensleydale.

Lunch finished, we stepped outside and shouldered our backpacks. The best way to see the Dales, we had decided, was to follow in the footsteps of Herriot - literally. We set out to retrace a walking trip the writer took with his son Jimmy and a friend in the early 1950s.

Described in ``James Herriot's Yorkshire,'' it heads up the valley of Wensleydale, along the Pennine hills and down the valley of Swaledale, traversing what the writer calls some of his favorite country in the Dales.

It was hard to think of a better way to explore this corner of Great Britain. The Yorkshire countryside is a casual walker's paradise, crisscrossed by an extensive web of footpaths, bridleways, country lanes and walkers' rights-of-way. The hills are old and gentle, and you're never far from a pub or teahouse with a crackling fire.

Herriot - a hardy walker, we decided - took four days for his journey and slept in youth hostels. We chose a more leisurely six days and spent the nights in comfortable bed and breakfasts.

Enclosed now in Yorkshire Dales National Park, the Dales are five idyllic valleys spread out like fingers in a glove through the Pennines, the range of craggy hills running down the spine of northern England. Dotted with stone walls and lonely farmhouses, the valleys are separated by stark moors festooned with purple heather, veiled often in mist and reverberating with the far-off bleating of sheep.

I'm slightly embarrassed to admit I spent quite some time searching a map for Herriot's home town of Darrowby before realizing it was fictional. But one can recognize pieces of it in the four real-life towns upon which Herriot said he based it: Richmond, Leyburn, Middleham and the author's actual hometown, Thirsk.

Like Herriot, we began our walk in Leyburn, a stately market town perched on a hillside at the entrance to Wensleydale. It was here, in the late 1930s, that Herriot did much of his early Dales veterinary work as an assistant to Frank Bingham. In his books, Herriot based the character of Ewan Ross on Bingman.

The Friday market in Leyburn's market square was in full swing. The town's residents bustled among stalls selling everything from flowers to fruit to hand-knitted wool sweaters.

From Leyburn, our path angled down through countless farms toward the River Ure. The walkers' right-of-way passes through the farmer's back yards, and every few minutes we'd have to climb over footholds in a stone wall, called stiles, or try to squeeze through a ``kissing gate,'' a narrow gate that proved diabolical with a backpack.

In the distance, through the trees, we caught glimpses of forbidding Bolton Castle, square-towered and grim, built in the 14th century to guard the entrance to Wensleydale. Legend has it that its mortar was mixed with ox blood to strengthen the walls. Its most enduring claim to fame, however, is that Mary Queen of Scots was a guest, not of her own free choosing, for six months in 1568.

In the village of Askrigg we encountered a different dimension of Herriot's Yorkshire.

This sleepy village served as Darrowby in the popular BBC television series, ``All Creatures Great and Small,'' which was widely viewed in the United States. We watched a tour bus disgorge a dozen sightseers who snapped pictures of each other in front of Cringley House, a home for the elderly that was used as Herriot's surgery, Skeldale House, in the TV series. It still says ``Skeldale House'' on the front door. And just up the street is the Kings Arms public house, which stood in for the Drover's Arms, Herriot's ``local.''

Later that day, as we walked across a farm outside the village of Hawes, we stopped to watch a beefy, ruddy-faced Yorkshireman at work. Sweating with the effort, he was herding sheep with black faces out of an ancient stone byre and into a mucky pool the size of a hot tub. When he finished, he came over to talk.

``Aye, they're off to market t'morrow,'' he said, wiping his hands. ``The dip kills the germs, and it makes their coats look pretty.''

He introduced himself as ``Mr. Thwaite'' and said he came from the town of the same name, over the hill in Swaledale. His son, he said, actually owned this farm; he was just looking after things while his son was in town.

`Ah'm supposed to be retired, but ah'll tell ye summat,'' he said. ``Ah'll allus work the farm. If ah didn't, ah might as well be dead.''

Just then his 2-year-old grandson toddled out. The little boy's generation, said Mr. Thwaite, may not be eager to continue working the farms.

``It's a hard life, this is,'' said Mr. Thwaite. ``In lambing season, you're allus up all night, and it takes the strength of a young man. Maybe the boy will go t' school and learn about computers.''

CAPTION(S):

3 Photos, Box

Photo: (1--Color) Yorkshire Dales area in England's New Yorkshire offers a wealth of country paths to amble along, as well as compelling vistas.

(2--Color) James Herriot

(3) Villages in the Swaledale valley inspired some of Herriot's best-known stories.

Box: James Herriot