Kirkbymoorside (From York Press)

Kirkbymoorside

8:00am Saturday 16th January 2010

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KIRKBYMOORSIDE was Hobson’s choice, thanks to a foot of overnight snow, but no complaints. Most years we have to hunt the county for white winter. “Where are your skis?” asked a guy shovelling salt.

We left the town and headed west, the virgin pavement steady going, for our mini pilgrimage to Kirkdale and the minster there. The lovely little Saxon church was pretty as a picture, there was no slush, though in warmer times hyenas laughed from a nearby cave, their bones to be later dug up by archaeologists in the early 19th century.

The stream, Hodge Beck, has a ford, this was free and so were runs and rapids, but the pools were iced. The bridleway bridge is in Kirk Dale, still down after it was washed away in the floods of 2005, and so we skirted round half a mile of the valley on fields where poplars slice a tablecloth of land.

An ash tree seemed to have shed many crumbs of plant parts, but that might have been something feeding on an adjacent larch. Otherwise the morning’s animal activity was preserved in paw and belly marks.

We took our first chance to get back into the valley, using the final length of a dead-end road that had been cut by a plough into a steep slide. Note the limekiln, then the scene opens out, and at the bottom is Hold Caldron or Cauldron, where the river falls and is bridged.

The mill building is surprisingly large and adds another element of drama. Smoke idled from the chimney of one of the few attendant cottages. Dogs barked from a keeper’s pen.

The climb out follows the borderline of the North York Moors National Park and was steep and warming because there was a foot on the ground here as well.

A robin followed us through his patch and posed for the camera, but clumsily he would knock off the translucent branch snow. Nevertheless, for his troubles, I sacrificed crumbs of sandwich; apparently they like cheese.

Higher up, members of the crow family patrolled above the tops of the conifers, checking if we might be foe, and chatting. Occasionally a tree would shed its load in a cascade; conifers did this and, with inches thick on every spray, they made a fast whoosh.

Otherwise it was calm in the valley. Not so on the top fields again, where a north-easterly was whipping powder into eddies, carpets flows and drift shapes. This is back lane land, where much on the map is named Hagg something.

We helped remobilise a 4X4 and, warmed to the cockles of our hearts, reached the magic shelter of Manor Vale, where the trees were golden in the sunshine and silver in the shade, perfect at minus three degrees.

Fact file

Distance: Five miles.

General location: North York Moors.

Start: Kirkbymoorside.

Right of way: Public.

Dogs: Legal.

Date walked: January 2010.

Road route: Via A170.

Car parking: Pay-and-display car park or roadside.

Lavatories: Car park.

Refreshments: Inns and cafés.

Tourist and public transport information: Pickering TIC 01751 473791.

Map: Drawn from OS Explorer OL26 North York Moors western.

Terrain: Valley and upland fields.

Difficulty: Moderate.

Please observe the Country Code and park sensibly. While every effort is made to provide accurate information, walkers set out at their own risk.

Directions

When in doubt look at the map. Check your position at each point.

Keep straight on unless otherwise directed.

1. Downhill from the post office in the Market Place, first right to West End and straight on along West Fields and leave Kirkbymoorside, pavement parallel to A170. Half a mile, first road right, straight on at crossroads (signed Kirkdale), footbridge/ford over Hodge Beck, uphill.

2. Detour to minster via metalled drive and return to road. Up bank in trees (fingerpost bridleway), 20 yards, gate (waymark) and right to field edge. Gate (waymark).

3. Gate on right (waymark) and path through wood edge. Right to road downhill.

4. Bridge over Hodge Beck and track on right, 20 yards, swings left uphill. Ignore side tracks on right.

5. At top of valleyside (small fingerpost), left 50 yards, gate into field, cross field, right to field-edge path (waymark post), 50 yards.

6. Gate into wood (waymark), join track uphill, gates (waymark), leave wood, gates (waymark), left to road.

7. First road on right (Hagg Road sign). Right at T-junction.

8. At edge of Kirkbymoorside, gates on left into Manor Vale Wood (footpath sign), path downhill 200 yards, right to join metalled private road through wooded dale. Join road.

9. Left at T-junction, right at mini-roundabout and back into Kirkbymoorside.

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