PUPILS from The Wensleydale School cleaned up at the area badminton championships.

My prediction is for a Dales world badminton champion in the next decade – it’s all about the village halls. Not only are they great for coffee mornings and toddler groups, but most are just the right size for a game of badders – and, unlike indoor-footy, there’s no danger of the shuttlecock scuffing the peach-coloured paintwork.

Due to popular demand and not at all because I have nothing else interesting to write about, I thought I would do another installment of Dales history, mainly stolen from the outof oblivion.org.uk website.

To quickly recap, there was ice, then forests, some big animals, a few hunters who chopped down the forests and then started farming.

The Romans came, had a scrap with the locals and then left, taking with them all their smart aleck ways, ideas and inventions, which the Dales folk hadn’t been all that fussed about.

Then came the Dark Ages, which we don’t know much about as nobody remembered to keep a diary, although it’s believed things stayed pretty much the same in the Dales – farming, mining, hunting, loving, dancing... I’m taking a punt on the last two.

Eventually, several powerful chiefdoms popped up in the late fourth and early fifth century, although their power was later challenged by the first wave of Anglian migrants who came from what is now Denmark.

Although we don’t know much about these invaders, it is believed they were pretty scared of the locals as they built a series of big dykes near Grinton to keep the natives to the west at bay. The dykes were a version of the road closure orders used by the county council to achieve a similar result today. An even more impressive dyke was built at the top end of Coverdale, possibly to stop the Britons from the Kingdom of Craven coming into the Northern Dales from Wharfedale to take Anglian sheep, quad bikes, metal gates and have a game of badders at Horsehouse Village Hall.