THE steep and rugged pathway leads from the main road up Swaledale to the ruined and roofless Smarber chapel, high above Low Row."Fancy having to walk all the way up here every Sunday morning in winter," says a middle-aged lady, panting purposefully towards the summit.

"Never mind that," says her friend, "fancy having to do it every Sunday in summer."

These days the path is trod - rejoicingly, as the hymnist had hoped - just once a year, an annual remembrance. Times have changed.

The undergrowth around the old chapel is cleared not with a scythe but with a strimmer, the location is considered yet more glorious because mobile phones work up there - they don't in the village - and a few disorientated pilgrims are advised of the error of their ways by a farmer on a quad bike.

There have been countless interpretations of the parable of the good shepherd, but few involving a farmer on a quad bike.

The "dissenting" chapel was founded in 1690 by Philip, Lord Wharton, registered at Quarter Sessions the following year because it was the necessary five miles from the nearest Anglican church. Iceland operated a similar exclusion zone for their cod fearing trawlermen.

Last Friday's service has particular significance for the Rev Gillian Bobbett, retiring this month as minister of the United Reformed churches in Low Row and Keld.

The evening is warmer than the day has been, the 25 minute service starting precisely at 7.30 and thus clock wise and contemporaneous with Coronation Street - though, these days, altogether more worthwhile.

Some hump carrier bags, an optimist a cool bag. Others look like they've come for a month. Some have brought rugs on which to sit, another is cushioned by a copy of the Darlington & Stockton Times, the dalesman's bible. It isn't that week's, of course; they're cannier than that in North Yorkshire.

Since there are no pews, a gentleman asks if he might sit on the nettle next to a young lady. It's probably a URC courtship ritual.

On the hillside yet further above, the good shepherd calls his flock in that arcane patois known as Swaudle, understood by about half the locals but by all of the sheep.

It explains why the flock always heads in the opposite direction. About 40 are present at 7.29. "If anyone else is coming, they're late," says Gillian.

Previously in Stockton, she has a maths degree, worked for Marconi in the south, became a minister at 29. "What I was doing at Marconi was about the level of a cryptic crossword puzzle, I thought the church was more important," she says.

"I occasionally think of a maths type illustration for a sermon, but most of the time I daren't use it. Sometimes I talk about the beauty of mathematics and get puzzled expressions in return."

Regrets? "Oh no, none whatsoever."

Though born in Kendal, on the other side of the Pennines, she had never set foot in Swaledale until leading a Stockton party to the URC run youth centre in Keld, further up the dale.

"I think all of us were quite smitten by it," says Gillian, and when her parents died, she bought a house in the dale, becoming "half-time" minister eight years ago.

The URC is now looking for a minister to lead the congregations in Keld, Low Row and Barnard Castle, and with some interesting roads in between.

Gillian has also become a local history expert, reminding Friday's gathering that Wharton - master of much that he surveyed in those parts -had personally welcomed William and Mary when they arrived from Holland to assume the English throne. Two Dutch elms at Spring End, nearby, are said to have been planted to mark the occasion.

Wharton also formed a Bible Trust, still operating. For 200 years, earning a "Wharton Bible" meant being able to recite half a dozen psalms by heart. Some at Smarber remember having to list in order the books of the Old Testament, a diminished demand.

"Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy," they begin, as if to underline its effectiveness. They still have the bibles, too.

There's a prayer of thanksgiving for Smarber's "quietness, hiddenness and openness to the sky", a reading from the twelfth chapter of the Epistle to the Corinthians, St Paul's anatomy for eight-year-olds.

"And the eye cannot say unto the hand, I have no need of thee; nor the head to the feet, I have no need of you."

A lone dog listens, ears pricked. A flautist plays engagingly, members of the Church of England parish choir are roundly applauded. "We don't worry much now about being independent, though I am proud of the tradition in which I have served," says Gillian. "What is important is the Christian witness among these people."

Among such splendours and with such agreeable people, a thoroughly enjoyable evening gets yet better at Alan and Anne Kilburn's, where a magnificent supper is served.

Anne's been Low Row's sub-postmistress since 1971, appointed two years below the then minimum age of 21 and chronicled - she recalls - by the same sedulous scribe now wolfing her corned beef pie. Save for the tussles with technology, she still enjoys it enormously. "It's just this Broadbent," says Anne.

"You mean broad band," someone corrects.

"Aye," says Anne, "Broadbent."

It's turned 9.30 by everyone heads homewards, the dale as tranquil as a sleeping baby.

Retirement notwithstanding, Gillian Bobbett's going nowhere. "I'd never ever want to leave here now."

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