文斯利代尔，英格兰约克郡谷地国家公园 Wensleydale, Yorkshire Dales National Park, North Yorkshire, England (© Guy Edwardes/Minden Pictures)

文斯利代尔，英格兰约克郡谷地国家公园 Wensleydale, Yorkshire Dales National Park, North Yorkshire, England (© Guy Edwardes/Minden Pictures)

'Cheese! We'll go somewhere where there's cheese!'

Ahh, the pastoral countryside of the Yorkshire Dales in Northern England. Dewey mornings, grazing farm animals, hand-built dry stone walls, and…cheese? Well, if you're a fan of the beloved British claymation series 'Wallace & Gromit,' then you may have first heard of this area of the Yorkshires, Wensleydale, because of its local cheese. In fact, the animated duo's notorious affinity for the local curd--which Wallace likes because producers thought it makes his face look 'nice and toothy'—became so widespread that it helped the Wensleydale cheesemakers stave off bankruptcy.

Cheese aside, another staple of Wensleydale, and the surrounding Yorkshire Dales National Park, are the 5,000 miles of dry stone walls that have crisscrossed the landscape for centuries. The walls were built by farmers to delineate boundaries, clarify land ownership, and more practically, to keep their cows and sheep from wandering off. The walls are considered 'dry' because they were built with no mortar to bind the stones together. Larger stones form a base for the wall, upon which smaller stones are stacked to create two parallel wall faces, constructed simultaneously. More stones are then used to fill in the gap between the two wall faces, with gravity doing the rest. While that may sound flimsy, a well-constructed dry stone wall can last at least 100 years.

“奶酪！我们要去有奶酪的地方

啊，英格兰北部约克郡山谷的田园乡村。杜威的早晨，放牧的农场动物，手工建造的干石墙，还有……奶酪？好吧，如果你是一个喜爱的英国粘土系列'华莱士和格罗米特'的粉丝，那么你可能第一次听说这个地区的约克郡，温斯莱代尔，因为它的当地奶酪。事实上，这对动画片中的二人组对当地乳酪臭名昭著的亲和力——华莱士喜欢这种乳酪，因为制作人认为这种乳酪能让他的脸看起来“又漂亮又有牙齿”——变得如此广泛，这帮助温斯利代尔奶酪制造商避免了破产。

除了奶酪之外，温斯莱代尔的另一大主食，以及周围的约克郡戴尔国家公园，都是绵延5000英里的干石墙，几个世纪以来，这些石墙纵横交错。这些围墙是由农民建造的，目的是划定边界，明确土地所有权，更实际的是，防止他们的牛羊四处游荡。这些墙被认为是“干的”，因为它们建造时没有用砂浆将石头粘合在一起。较大的石头形成墙的基础，较小的石头堆放在上面，形成两个平行的墙面，同时建造。然后用更多的石头填充两个墙面之间的缝隙，剩下的部分由重力来完成。虽然这听起来很脆弱，但一座建造良好的干石墙至少可以使用100年。