I HAD been thwarted by overgrown veg along the River Foss at Strensall, so moved five miles out to Stillington and had a good time. A nice start - grass/lawn to sit on while you tie your laces, pubs a plenty (one metamorphosed into an Indian) - is followed by ten tedious minutes alongside the main road, after which the fields are yours.

There are fields all around - some giant, some old and narrow, some of knee-high barley, darker wheat, freshly watered spuds, rape, peas and maize and no horrible herbicide-dead set-aside. Corn is ablaze with poppies, a hedge red with the new growth of field maple.

Field edge paths have fancy dandelions, namely goats beard, broadcasting their large clocks of seeds. Verges sparkle with geraniums. Roads/Tarmac tracks are mostly hardly used, sporting grass Mohicans.

Sometimes you walk in the open, sometimes by windbreak woods of oak and ash and pine with rhododendrons and wild roses. A farm track is lined with young Swedish whitebeams.

Only one walker was out in the hot sultry sunny Sunday afternoon, it was very quiet, rarely any road noise, a single skylark sang, there were caterpillars on the track, and two cyclists had bagged the best view bench sandwich stop on a little hill top. You get good views of other rounded hills that rise to about two hundred feet, that's a hundred feet above the surrounds. You see Stillington across a valley and Crayke perched handsomely.

Going back in time this was a land of abbeys and priories. Marton Priory has proud chimneys, the site of Moxby Priory is hidden behind a belt of trees and by the site of Marton Abbey are the shapes of fishponds.

Stillington wastewater treatment works is only with you for ten seconds, Stillington Mill is on the Foss and has exuberant waterlilies and a solar roof.

You will doubtless see a few red foot and mouth 'no entry' signs. These should have come down by now; after all they went up quickly enough in February. On this route I struck lucky, someone had been out clearing overgrown sections of path, even giving the White Bridge over the Foss a new splash of white paint on its end timbers. However I was reminded that shorts are out and nettle-bashing sticks are in for the rest of the season.

Click here to view a map of the walk