Cleveland Hills

Bank Foot is one of those straightforward names, go east from the farm there and you go straight up, up an escarpment of the Cleveland Hills and on to the moors, a climb of 500 feet. On this walk the effort comes later because first there's a nice mile across the fields to the hamlet of Battersby, a stroll memorable for the views to Captain Cook's Monument two miles away and for the shock of white in the hedges with the flowering of the blackthorn.

Battersby is a pleasant hamlet that sits on a quiet loop road. Its houses are of dressed sandstone and a stream runs through beds of wild garlic.

At the last house, a sunken green lane takes off for the escarpment and makes for a super climb - this is one of the best ways up. For the first length the gradient is gentle and the views to the mouth of Kildale are lovely. Along the route are grown out hawthorn, some big ash trees and, for colour, a blaze of gorse. The track steepens when it enters a narrow conifer belt; a twist and a turn makes the altitude. The trees, mainly larch and pine, let in enough light for the flowers, the white petals of the wood sorrel against their fresh green leaves. A small cut is of flaky shale, another, a wet face of fern and moss.

At the top are the moors of heather and bilberry and as the latter makes a comfortable cushion we took a sandwich stop that stretched in the sunshine to a doze.

An old and spooky barbed-wire wound pole is topped with the words 'Please Keep To Footpath', but this is "open access" land and soon a National Park notice reminds and welcomes the walker or cyclist.

A wheeled one spun past us on the track over Battersby Moor, visible through the heather for a fair distance. But time up here was too short, the views are tremendous, of the green fields we had crossed held in the arms of the hills and beyond the vastness of the plains to the sea. Actually we dawdled along the top, spent a while watching the spinning and flipping aerobatics of the lapwings.

There's a short terrace of houses on the plains. Earlier on we'd walk quite close to them but now they were visible, it's called Battersby Junction and reminds that once this was an area important for its railway that collected ironstone from the Rosedale mines deep in the moors and fed the blast furnaces of the burgeoning Middlesbrough.

The way off the moor starts as a path in the heather and then connects with a track, passes Battersby Crags and then, for the last bit, there's an option through some woods. We thought this one of the best of the many routes we have taken hereabouts.

Directions

When in doubt look at the map. Check your position at each point. Keep straight on unless otherwise directed.

1. From track-side parking, right to farm tarmac, 50 yards, ladder stile (signed), grassy track on right of field, stile/fieldgate (waymark), track, join dirt track in field for 100 yards, fieldgate to grassy path with fence to left, stile/fieldgate and immediately left and right to field-edge path with hedge to right (waymark), fieldgate to 20 yards of track (waymark) then diagonally across field to stile/gateway.

2. Right to road through village.

3. At 'end' of village and at sharp left-hand bend, track on right (shed to left) and ford/footbridge (no sign) and stay on track uphill, between fields then up through woods, ignoring side turns.

4. Fieldgate to track uphill on moor. Right at road corner to track and two gates (fingerpost Bloworth 4M).

5. At junction with track to left, take path to right (cairn that was about three feet high). Path angles down, ignore a cut heather path on right at a cairn and 50 yards below a grouse butt. Path becomes track, 200 yards, sleeper bridge and swings right as sunken track.

6. At waymarked posts and chainlink barrier join stone track downhill. Fieldgate, then either stay on track all the way down, or 20 yards, path on left downhill through wood (signed), steps and tiny bridge and cross track, 50 yards, stile and left to rejoin track. Gates and through yard.

Fact file

Distance: Four-and-a-half miles.

Time: Three hours.

General location: Cleveland Hills.

Start: Bank Foot.

Right of way: Public.

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

Dogs: Legal.

Date walked: Saturday 29 April, 2006.

Road route: Take road junction signed 'Bank Foot' on the northeast outskirts of Ingleby Greenhow, then continue mile.

Car parking: Bank Foot, by track.

Lavatories: None.

Refreshments: The Dudley Arms at Ingleby Greenhow.

Tourist & public transport information: Great Ayton TIC 01642 722835.

Terrain: Below, on and above escarpment.

Points of interest: Views.

Difficulty: Comfortable 600 foot climb.

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