Terrington (From York Press)

Terrington

1:27pm Saturday 9th February 2008 in Search By George Wilkinson

TERRINGTON was crusty after a hard and icy night. We crunched out from the village to its Mowthorpe Lane and that turned out to be a mile more of skidding and sliding rather than a brisk warm-up.

But this lane is no thoroughfare, traffic was a recalcitrant quad bike. It's no more than a dead-end to farms, though it passes two cemeteries, one normal and the other a private green one charging £600 a go including a tree. Anyway, after running straight and hedged through flat fields, the lane is almost done, and the snow came down fine and grainy and the blue sky was gone.

Note the posh new fingerposts for walkers, cyclists and horse riders, one sign unusually flags up a named farm. The signs also reminded that we were in the Howardian Hills area of outstanding natural beauty. This walk is one promoted by the AONB authority, so bridges are secure and stiles are sturdy and with guillotine dog slides.

And not a bad walk at all. From the windy open tops we dropped down to Mowthorpe. I have heard this area described as "a backwater, even in this parish, for 400 years".

On the Ordnance Survey map the name Mowthorpe occurs nine times attached to hill, wood, bridge, and principally the dale. Once it was a manor. Before that, at the end of the ice age there was a lake.

Sparrows quarrelled by fishponds, woods lay by streams where willows green with moss leaned cracked on the banks. We entered Castle Howard territory. The sky brightened, crows gathered, rabbits scampered and a rat poked its head out of hole, its tunnel convenient for a game bird feeder bin. I saw a single flower of a dandelion.

Most beautiful on the day was the snow, though melting, stippled shiny on the slopes of grass, making dark the hedges and plastering the southwest side of the skyline trees.

We reached the end of Mowthorpe Dale and then little Ganthorpe, rich in stone and the birthplace of Richard Spruce (1817-1893).

When 16, Spruce recorded 485 species of flowering plants around this hamlet; raise a glass to him, he became a top international botanist much responsible for quinine.

We left Ganthorpe by a cascade of ponds, old and very well made and thickly fringed with tall evergreen sedge. To follow, in contrast, a long field slope is middled by a lynchet path.

Finally, it's a sprint along a back road back into Terrington, but the verges are okay. You enter at End Cottage; at Terrington Hall Public School the aconites were out but the snowdrops were lagging.

The post office part of the shop, the last PO in the AONB', is to axed; a sheet of ice hung from an electricity supplier's PR sign.

The Bay Horse advertised Sunday Carvery at £8.25 and in the Back o' the Shop gallery and café there was tea, nosh and biscuits, and paintings of nearby landscapes by Stef Mitchell, including hot and blasted images of the Wolds, the paints narcotic gold and pink.

Directions

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

1 Lane between Back o' the Shop Gallery and café and Bay Horse Inn, 100 yards, right to Mowthorpe Lane (signed). Turns to track and keep straight on (ignore Private Road sign), drive becomes metalled again, downhill.

2 Into farmyard, track swings right (sign), gates out, 50 yards, left downhill on track (waymark), 100 yards.

3 Stile on left before bridge (waymark), stile (waymark), through wood, footbridge and stile and keep by wood to your right. Becomes fenced path.

4 Gate on left in old fence about 100 yards before corner of wood (waymark on other side of post), 11 o'clock for 100 yards, hedge gap, pass on rough grassland below house then stay by stream and hedge to your right. Ignore footbridge and side turns. Gates (waymark), cross field to gates ahead.

5 Right to track, cross road, road into Ganthorpe, track on left after Ganthorpe Hall (fingerpost), path downhill through trees by stream and ponds, gate into field, track by wood.

6 Path on left at far corner of wood, 50 yards, snickelgate (waymark), grass path between fields then through trees. Right to road - mostly good verge, back to Terrington.

Fact file

Distance: Five miles.

General location: Howardian Hills.

Start: Terrington.

Right of way: Public.

Map: Drawn from OS Explorer 300 Howardian Hills and Malton.

Dogs: Legal.

Date walked: February 2008.

Road route: From York via Sheriff Hutton.

Car parking: Roadside in Terrington.

Lavatories: None.

Refreshments: Inn and café.

Tourist and public transport information: Malton TIC 01653 600048. www.howardianhills.org.uk Terrain: Valley and low tops.

Points of interest: Art exhibition till February 23.

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.