SURRENDER Bridge is heavy with lead mining history. In the summer of 2000, we explored the Old Gang smelting mill a mile upstream.

This time we visited the ruins of the nineteenth century smelting mill half a mile downstream.

But first up, a warm up, up the back road, a chat about cycling with a tough tramper from Teesside who was resting a painful toe, and then on to the moors.

These were lovely, a mosaic of heather and grasses, with the bleeping of a golden plover, and a sun-blasted backdrop of Fremington Edge.

At a height of 1,400ft, there's a sight of Surrender Bridge a mile away as the crow flies. A grouse pretended to have a broken wing and ran awkwardly ahead to distract us from the chicks tumbling in the heather.

We descended past neat little stone-walled fields to the valley of Barney Beck, caught sight of the rooftops of the village of Healaugh, took the shade of rhododendron, giant redwood and clipped yew at Thiernswood Hall and then started the last couple of miles above the river.

First the route was over pastures along one side of a stone wall, then it switched to the other side and a slug of adrenaline kicked in with the 45-degree slope, steep, deep and wooded to the beck. One doesn't descend, instead there's a negotiation of the edge. There's a sharp side gully to cross, a beck to ford, so watch out for heavy rain. Occasionally there's a vertical drop.

Ground zero in this part of the Dales, grid reference 000 000, is close, but not a place of any great mystical significance, not yet anyway, but given a millennium or so who knows. Also nearby are the Dagger Stones.

A desolation of a not displeasing sort overtakes the landscape.

With a mile to go, the trees give out and the valley is bare, the beck a silver thread through a rocky gorge, Afghan style.

This is a precursor to the Surrender Bridge smelt mill, from which lead poured between 1839 and 1881, then to be taken by horse to Stockton or Hull for sale.

From a complex of roofless stone walls two slab-covered flues join, these took the poisonous fumes half a mile up the hillside. It must have been dire above and below ground.

The pickmen, dressers, deadmen and level wallers sang a song called Fourpence A Day.

* Map: Based on OS Explorer OL30 Yorkshire Dales northern and central areas.