Ripley

Ripley is a model village near Harrogate, like Prince Charles’s Poundbury, but this one is 18th century.

For me, it’s similarly disconcerting. However, Sir Nikolaus Pevsner wrote that it has “great charm... in various versions of Gothic to Tudor”. Ripley is in stone with pointed windows and chunky castellations, and the castle goes back ages.

You can pay for a tour of the castle and grounds, £8. We set off for the countryside that is not deer park. Yet we got free deer. Now free deer is not a deal that has been popular through English history, and the stocks set in the cobbled centre of Ripley would probably have been worn smooth by the limbs of unfortunates that helped themselves to venison.

But peering over the stone wall we saw a herd of fallow deer, the sunlight catching white rumps, and a herd of red deer, antlers held aloft by the stag.

Off to the south, there is the modern world, wind turbines spinning at 15 rpm and the “golf balls” of the Menwith Hill spy station.

We were on the Nidderdale Way so, as you would expect, the going was good, tracks, pastures and not often muddy. And the countryside, although not stunning, is pleasant enough bar the rather messy Low Kettle Spring Farm.

The half-mile of road is also Nidderdale Way and has a wide verge, and then for me the nicest part of the walk.

I’d searched in vain for a sign of spring, but this is a black month, and the air was bitter.

But at an old quarry there was some life and a spotted woodpecker gave away its presence with hammering and while watching it we were surrounded by a flurry of long-tailed tits and wrens.

A shallow valley brought us to new woods. Such plantations are so popular nowadays.

The track lifted, and we sat on a bench dedicated to a head keeper of the Ripley Castle Shoot.

The bench is well sighted and with binoculars we could distinguish the White Horse at Kilburn from the slicks of snow on the North York Moors escarpment.

The run-in is past a pheasant farm and it brought a sight of the high-rise blocks of Harrogate, which I realise is not the essential Harrogate, but it’s what you see. And then back into Ripley, a carnivorous village, with the Boars Head, a butcher selling exotic flesh, and all those castellations.

Fact file

Distance: Six miles
General Location: Near Harrogate
Start: Ripley
Right of Way: Public
Dogs: Legal
Date walked: January 2010
Road Route: Various
Car Parking: Large free car park at Ripley
Lavatories: Car park
Refreshments: Inn, shop and cafe at Ripley
Tourist & Public Transport Information: Harrogate TIC 0845 3893223
Map: Drawn from OS Explorer 298 Nidderdale
Terrain: Low hills
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 Left from car park to road (pavement), 100 yards, left to road and pass church and castle. Fieldgate/gaps (sign Hollybank Lane), track.

2 Track on right (3-way fingerpost at Sadler Carr). Deer park wall to your right.

3 Track on right and keep by wall, 20 yards, fieldgate (waymark). By wall.

4 Snickelgate (1 waymark) and 11 o'clock downhill across field away from wall. Fieldgate near wood (waymark), uphill, stile (waymark), by hedge to your right, fieldgate (waymark), stile, drive, metal gate.

5 Cross main road, left 20 yards, right to Law Lane.

6 Track on right (fingerpost), fieldgate, downhill, stile/fieldgate (waymark), ten yards, left, 100 yards, stile/fieldgate (waymark), fieldgate, cross field, white footbridge (waymark). Right diagonally uphill across field to corner as route into farmyard obstructed.

7 Right to track (Nidderdale Way).

8 Left to road uphill (fingerpost), mostly verge.

9 Gate/fieldgate on right (fingerpost South Stainley), track by wood. Gate/fieldgate to track through wood, ignore left fork, ford (waymark), ten yards, gate (waymark) and left uphill by wood.

10 Immediately before fieldgate (waymarks), path on right along edge of valley, two waymarked posts, gate into trees (fingerpost), 50 yards, gate to fenced path, fieldgate and straight on by hedge/fence to your right, 'grass topped' bridge, track turns left uphill, fieldgate, track through wood.

11 From benches at wood edge, 100 yards, left to track at junction. Fieldgate (waymark). Right to track at junction, cattlegrid/fieldgate (waymark), left at 'Y' junction to metalled dead-end road.

12 Cross main road, left to roundabout (pavement), right to road into village.

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