In the folklore of the North York Moors, the giant Wade and his wife Bell were the builders of the landscape. Bell raised Mulgrave Castle and Wade built Pickering Castle, working at the same time across the moors and sharing a single great hammer that they flung back and forth to one another over the miles between. To help Bell reach the cow she pastured on the far side of the high moor, Wade is said to have laid down a great paved road — the ancient causeway on Wheeldale Moor still called Wade's Causeway.
The story
Other features were credited to their domestic quarrels: in a fit of temper Wade scooped up a handful of earth to hurl at Bell, and the hollow he tore out became the great natural amphitheatre of the Hole of Horcum, while the flung clod missed her and landed as the hill of Blakey Topping. Behind the giant may lie a dim memory of a real Wada, an Anglian nobleman of considerable power in eighth-century Northumbria; folklore simply enlarged him, and his wife, to a scale fit to shape the moors themselves.