Yorkshire is famous for all sorts of things. Yorkshire pudding, for example, the Bronte Sisters, the Yorkshire Dales and Moors, and of course the legendary gruff nature of Yorkshiremen in particular. (There's a saying: you can always tell a Yorkshireman - but you can't tell him much)

But the other thing that's as local, resilient and as tough as a Yorkshireman's attitude is the ubiquitous dry stone wall. For over 5000 years people in this part of the world have been building walls out of hand-shaped stones, using only gravity and what's called an educated eye to construct them.

Traditionally, mortar or cement are not used; the stones are merely stacked according to their size, shape and weight, topped off usually with a row of upright narrower stones. (When I say "merely", obviously there's a lot more skill than just stacking). Luckily, earthquakes are relatively unknown here, so freestanding walls don't need to survive that sort of shaking, though they do need to be strong enough to resist the butting and shoving of sheep, the often strong winds, and temperature extremes from the depths of a bitterly cold winter to a scorching hot summer.

The fact they've been around for millennia prove they can do that, and it's pleasing to see so many of the walls still in use as boundaries today, despite a move to larger acreages in modern times.

We're currently staying for the weekend in a farm cottage in Darley, surrounded by dry stone walls. We're about eight miles from Harrogate in North Yorkshire, and also near Ripon where tomorrow we deliver Yasmin to Ripon Grammar School to begin her first year as a sixth-form boarder.

We've warned her that her Kiwi accent will be something of a novelty at school and that she might want to consider adopting a more local accent, but she is resisting the suggestion vehemently. I think that's called stone-walling.