Award-winning documentary that follows the solitary existence of Hannah Hauxwell, a farmer who lives all alone in a remote farmhouse without electricity or running water, in the isolated dale of Baldersdale in County Durham. The documentary also follows the return of Brian and Mary Bainbridge to an even more remote farm further up Teesdale after they left several years earlier because the winters had been too severe and they had lost most of their sheep.
Hannah Hauxwell, last seen in Too Long a Winter (1973) running a remote farm single-handedly, goes up to London, for the first time in her life, as guest of honour at the Woman of the Year lunch at the Savoy Hotel.
Almost two decades after Too Long a Winter, the same TV crew returned to her farm to catch up with Hannah. The second documentary, A Winter Too Many, saw that Hannah had a little more money, which she had invested in a few more cows. The crew followed her to London where she was guest of honour at the Women of the Year gala. But, out of the spotlight, her back-breaking work on the farm continued; and each winter became harder for her to endure. With her health and strength slowly failing, she had to make a heart-rending decision: to sell her family farm and the animals she adored and move into a warm cottage in a nearby village.
The solitary Daughter of the Dales, leaves New York and travels to Pennsylvania to find out about the Amish people, whose lives have an amazing similarity to Hannah's.
Hannah visits Houston in Texas for a tour of the Space Centre and has an important decision on her return to the UK.
ITV revisits Hannah Hauxwell in 2008 to see how the then 81 year old is doing. Whilst the production company that made the original documentaries, 'Yorkshire Television' is no longer around having been consumed by ITV Plc, Hannah still lives in the village 6 miles from her original home at Low Birk Hat Farm. The new documentary, Hannah Hauxwell: Past and Present, has been made by the Leeds-based company 'Really Good Productions'.