FEW would argue that the landscape of the Yorkshire Dales is among the most beautiful in England.

But while the Dales may lift the visitor's heart, it is not necessarily an earthly paradise for locals.

It is a point made powerfully by novelist Jane Gardam in her contribution to a new book celebrating the 50th anniversary of the Yorkshire Dales National Park.

Jane has had a home near Gunnerside in Swaledale for more than 20 years. She loves the Dales and says they are probably more beautiful now than when she first saw them as a girl in 1928.

That beauty belies the hard struggle for survival of the Dales people. Abandoned mine shafts are sad reminders of the times when the lead mines failed and those who had relied on them starved or left. More recently, farmers have struggled, both with the devastation caused by foot and mouth and with the "insulting" price offered for milk, she says.

Jane notes today there are only two dairy herds left in upper Swaledale. "We can't live on beauty," a farmer's son told her. "If we could, life would be a doddle."

It's a timely reminder of the daily struggle for survival that has made the Dales what they are today.

This struggle - along with the beauty - is captured in The Yorkshire Dales: A 50th Anniversary Celebration.

In the first section of the book, magnificent black and white photographs capture every aspect of Dales life 50 years ago, from the poverty of a family standing with their geese outside their stone cottage in Wensleydale, to peat-cutting and the use of horses and sleds to carry bracken cut from the high fells down into the valley for use as bedding.

The middle section looks at the changing face of the Dales and part three The Dales Today. Throughout, the use of sumptuous photographs and magnificent landscape paintings makes this a book to treasure for all lovers of the Dales, locals and visitors.

Updated: 09:09 Wednesday, June 02, 2004