Christopher Somerville

First published in: The Times Click here to view a map for this walk in a new window


Pied wagtails were pattering sidelong up the slate roofs of the cottages along the straggling lane through Great Asby. ‘Three Greyhounds?’ said the cheerful lady near the bus shelter. ‘Just over the packhorse bridge, can’t miss it.’

At the southern outskirts of the village we turned along a farm road that wound into open country. A flight of several dozen wintering fieldfares swooped into an ash tree, bounced and chattered amongst themselves, then fled downwind, their grey heads and dark tails showing out against a streaky blue sky.

A stone barn, sturdily buttressed, stood by the lane. Here the roadway roughened as it rose through rushy fields. Away south sombre moor tops lay under rolling cloud, and behind us in the east the rampart of the North Pennine hills climbed into a slate-grey murk. But here in this rolling countryside between the hills, sunlight lay thick and gold across pasture that was squared and striped with carefully maintained stone walls.

Beyond Halligill we left the track and plodged across rain-sodden fields, scrambling over a muddy beck and trudging down the grassy track to Gaythorne Hall. The farmer came puttering up on a quad as his ewes scampered away in communal panic. ‘Lambing from January on’, he told us.

Gaythorne Hall in its dell looked magnificent even in the steely embrace of scaffolding – a three-storey Tudor house, gabled and handsomely porched. We squeezed through an obstacle course of gates and a cattle crush to gain the farm lane that wound through sheep pastures up to the moor road back to Great Asby.

By the road lay the Bronze Age burial mound of Hollin Stump, where Victorian antiquarians unearthed three skeletons and a horse skull. What religious or magic connotation that had had was anyone’s guess. Walking on, we wondered what those remote ancestors would have made of the enormous rainbow that arced down from a black stormy sky towards the distant Pennine heights.

Nearing Great Asby we passed an exhausted ram lying prone in a field, smeared from head to tail with blue raddle. You might think that all rams lead the apolaustic life. But this one, surrounded by a hundred grazing ewes whose rumps he had ‘painted’ blue, bore a grim expression that said a ram’s lot at tupping time is not all beer and skittles.

How hard is it? 6 miles; easy/moderate; moorland roads and field paths, some boggy.

Start: Three Greyhounds PH, Great Asby, Appleby-in-Westmorland CA16 6EX (OS ref NY 681132)

Getting there: Great Asby is signed from B6260 (Appleby-Orton)

Walk (OS Explorer OL19): Right across bridge; left; at junction by post box, right on farm road (679129). In ½ mile pass barn; fork right (672128), In ⅓ mile track bends right towards Halligill (663128), but keep ahead over stile (yellow arrow/YA). In 50m, stile over wall on right (arrow). Half right towards left/south end of Halligill Wood. Cross beck and stile (659129, YA); up bank to step stile. Follow direction of arrow, slightly right; plantation soon in sight to right; just beyond it, double stile (656130, YA). Slight right across field to gates/stile (YA). Cross beck; follow cart track to Gaythorne Hall (650132), hidden in dip. In front of house, right (‘Drybeck’). In 50m, left (‘Gaythorne Cottages’) through walled paddock, then heavy gate, then wooden gate on right, to farm road (649131). Ahead; in ⅓ mile at Gaythorne Cottages, left (644123, ‘Great Asby’) on moor for 3 miles to Great Asby.

Lunch: Picnic; or Three Greyhounds, Great Asby (01768-351428, asbyparish.org.uk – contact for opening times).

Accommodation: George Hotel, Orton CA10 3RJ (01539-624071)

Info: asbyparish.org.uk; Appleby TIC (01768-351177)

First published in: The Times Click here to view a map for this walk in a new window


After a day of torrential rain, a cold blowy morning had broken over the Dark Peak. Grey clouds rolled east like cannon smoke, and there was a muted light over the moors of the South Yorkshire/Derbyshire border. Neatly built walls of chapel-black gritstone lined the green lane we followed uphill between sheep pastures.

A gate led onto the open moor at Rud Hill, the winding path a glinting trickle of water among bracken and rocks as the moors disgorged yesterday’s rain. There was something bracing and exhilarating about tramping this watery path with the blustery wind in our faces and the three slit-grey eyes of the Redmires Reservoirs coldly winking below.

Down beside the reservoirs it was astonishing to note how far their water levels had fallen during the past summer of drought. These water stores were built up here in the 1830s and 40s after an outbreak of cholera in nearby Sheffield had claimed more than 400 lives. Drinking-water unpolluted by sewage was desperately needed in a city that had doubled in size since 1800 but still relied on medieval drainage.

We stopped to watch a flock of fifty mistle thrushes descend to strip a rowan of its orange berries, then turned along the stony upland track of the Long Causey. Roman soldiers laid it out, packmen and their horses crossed the moors along its cobbled roadway. Today it was runners and walkers who passed the trackside verges where the bright scarlet fruit of cranberry added a dash of colour to the sombre grey of the stone and the foxy brown of the moors.

Stanage Pole stood tall among its rocks, a waymark for travellers since medieval times. Here we crossed from South Yorkshire into Derbyshire. The Long Causey dipped to Stanage Edge and a tremendous southward view across an undulating green valley to where the landscape rose towards the limestone uplands of the White Peak.

The homeward way led along Stanage Edge, a gritstone cliff filled with landscape dramas in its own right. The finely layered rocks had been weathered into faces, towers, animal shapes, stacks of pancakes. Helmeted climbers’ heads popped up over the edge, children jumped yelling off the rocks, and the wind blew everyone inside out. What a wonderful natural playground, halfway between the earth and the clouds.

How hard is it? 7½ miles; easy gradients, but watch your step; stumbly rocks, boggy patches, rough moorland paths.

Start: Fulwood Lane car park, near Norfolk Arms Hotel, SN10 4QN (OS ref SK 285840)

Getting there: Bus 258 (Sheffield)
Road – Fulwood Lane is beside Norfolk Arms, Ringinglow Road, S11 7TS

Walk (OS Explorer OL1): Right along Fulwood Lane. In ⅔ mile at right bend, ahead (277845, ladder stile) on green lane (permissive path). In 400m, through gate onto moor (273845); boggy but clearly trodden path with occasional waymark posts. In 1 mile descend from White Stones (261845 approx) to stile (258849). Left across bridge; left up stony Long Causey (257851). In ¾ mile pass Stanage Pole (247844); in 500m, left along Stanage Edge (241843 – watch your step!) for 1¼ miles to trig pillar (251830). Bear a little left; in 200m drop down through rocks on right (253830); left on path to Upper Burbage Bridge (259830). Left along road (path on left verge). In 1¼ miles opposite forestry plantation on right, left (279834, gate) on moor path. In 400m, just past white ‘gate’, fork right (278838, waymark post) to wall stile (280840). Diagonally across field; stile; across field, keeping right of wall, to Fulwood Lane (285842). Right to car park.

Lunch/Accommodation: Norfolk Arms, Ringinglow Road (0114-230-2197, norfolkarms.com)

Info: peakdistrict.gov.uk

First published in: The Times Click here to view a map for this walk in a new window


A cold, cloudy day on the coast of North Yorkshire as we went down a twisty street between the closely packed houses of Staithes. The fishing village where in the 1740s young James Cook began to dream of running away to sea is a tumble of red roofed houses and steep little laneways.

A couple of cobles – local fishing boats with pointed prow and stern, Norse style – lay in the low-tide mud of Staithes harbour, a scoop of defensive walls facing the North Sea between dramatically striated cliffs with razor edge profiles.

From the cliffs above, we got a wonderful view over the many-coloured houses of the village and the rugged coast marching away north-west towards the distant giant’s geometry of industrial Teesside.

The massive buildings of Boulby mine, just inland of Staithes and still extracting rock salt and natural fertilisers, stood witness to the mineral riches that have been dug for centuries from these varicoloured cliffs – alum, potash, coal, jet and iron ore.

Below the cliffs, wide rock pavements ran out seaward, the sea roaring softly at their outer extremities. Fulmars and rock pigeons swooped with the thermals. Bands of ironstone and smeary greys of mudstone lined the cliffs, the harder ironstone outcropping in sharp-featured knobbles and crags.

At Port Mulgrave a steep path led downhill from the line of clifftop houses as far as a seat. The landslips of this unstable coast have destroyed the former hair-raising descent by ladder and rope down the lower half of the cliff. On the dark rocky shore below, a famous fossil-hunting spot, three or four cobles lay on the scars beyond a line of home-built fishermen’s huts. The crumbly cliffs stood guard all round, walling off this little world apart where a great ironstone mine once fed the blast furnaces of Teesside.

Past a terrace of former miners’ cottages with outside privy sheds, and out beyond Hinderwell across deep little stream gorges in dense woodland of sycamore and hazel. A nuthatch with a slate-blue back, buff waistcoat and dashing black eye stripe scuttled head nethermost down an oak trunk, searching the bark for insects. We topped out of the woods and crossed sheep pastures corrugated with medieval ridge-and-furrow, heading north towards Staithes where a pale blue sky hung over the invisible sea.

How hard is it? 5½ miles; strenuous in parts, steep woodland valleys

Start: Staithes car park, Staithes TS13 5AD (OS ref NZ 782185)

Getting there: Bus X4 (Middlesbrough-Whitby)
Road – Staithes is signed off A174 (Guisborough-Whitby)

Walk (OS Explorer OL27): Follow ‘Footpath to village.’ At harbour, right up Church Street; follow Cleveland Way/CW for 1¼ miles to Port Mulgrave (Optional detour – by first houses/796177, fingerpost points left down steep path to seat and viewpoint over shore. Return same way). In 200m, right/inland off CW (799175). At churchyard, left to cross A174 at Hinderwell (791169). Ahead down close; ahead up laneway; right along terrace. Follow alleyway, then footpath (fingerpost, yellow arrows/YA) across fields into woodland (785167). Down to cross Dales Beck. Keep same direction up, over and down to cross Borrowby Dale (781166). At foot of steps, right up woodland path to gate (781167). Half right across field; right (YA) past Plum Tree House (780171). On (YAs) across fields. At ‘Borrowby’ fingerpost cross 2 stiles (779175); follow right-hand hedge down to cross Dales Beck (780176). Right (‘Staithes’) up bank, past Seaton Hall to A174 (782180). Left to roundabout; right into Staithes.

Lunch: Cod & Lobster Inn, High Street, Staithes TS13 5BH (01947-840330, codandlobster.co.uk)

Accommodation: Captain Cook Inn, Staithes Lane, Staithes TS13 5AD (01947-840200, captaincookinn.co.uk)

Info: Whitby TIC (01723-383636); yorkshire.com

First published in: The Times Click here to view a map for this walk in a new window


When Squire William Danby of Swinton Park saw his tenants go hungry during a farming slump in the early 19th century, he did something about it – namely, he paid them a shilling a day to construct a scaled-down Stonehenge in the wilds of his North Yorkshire estate.

In the woods above the yurts, treehouses and tepees of Swinton Bivouac’s glamping grounds we found the henge, an oval of massive blocky stones enclosing a ring of trilithons or stone portals. If there’s something conscience-tweaking about the back story of the Druid’s Temple, there’s also something laughable about the structure in a Spinal Tap sort of way. Squire Danby tried to recruit a hermit to live on site, speak to no-one and let hair and beard grow free – but none of the candidates, however hungry, proved willing to tackle that job.

A cold wind blew from the sombre moors to the west as we followed the Ripon Rowel long distance path down into the valley of Pott Beck. Behind in the east the long ridge of the North York Moors, twenty miles off, lay pink and grey under a cloudy sky.

The path ran round a rim of forestry above Low Knowle Farm house, barns and byres all stone-built, old and tight-knit against the weather in their hollow.

With the spillway from the dam at Leighton Reservoir twinkling near at hand, we turned away along a path through rough pastures of rushes and clumps of harebells where blunt-faced rams stared us out as we passed. Healey village lay along its hillside beyond the River Burn, the coffee-coloured stone houses running east to the church’s tall spire.

At Broadmires Farm the house stood all of a piece with the byre, a tradition of architecture hereabouts stretching back to the longhouses that the Norse settlers built in these dales a thousand years ago.

By the chattering Sole Beck a grey wagtail bobbed on a stone, its yellow belly catching a glint of sun through the leaves. Climbing the homeward path through the birch woods above the chattering Sole Beck, we came to Lobley Hall, a grand name for a ruinous house three hundred years old. Elders choked the living room, buddleia reached out of the chimneys.

‘KW 1698’ was carved into the lintel above the doorway. Whoever KW was, the builder of Lobley Hall certainly commanded a beautiful view of beck, hillside and woodland in this lonely daleside cleft.

How hard is it? 5 miles; field and woodland paths, muddy in places

Start: Swinton Bivouac car park, High Knowle Farm, Knowle Lane, Ripon HG4 4JZ (OS ref SE 180787) – £3

Getting there: From Masham (A6108) follow ‘Fearby’. On far side of village, sharp left to cross River Burn. Right, and follow ‘Swinton Bivouac, Druid’s Temple’ to car park.

Walk (OS Explorers 298, 302): Walk to Druid’s Temple (175787, signed), and return to top of Bivouac drive. Left (‘Burgess Bank’, ‘Ripon Rowel’/RR); follow well waymarked RR clockwise for 2 miles via Knowle Plantation (175791), Burgess Bank (168793), Broadmires Farm (178798) to road (183798). Ahead; in ¼ mile RR turns left (187801, ‘Healey’), but keep ahead (‘Swinton’). In 500m ford Sole beck (192799); in 150m, right (kissing gate, yellow arrow/YA). Follow YAs for ½ mile to pass Lobley Hall ruin (191793). In another 150m ignore YA on right; continue on left bank of Sole Beck to cross road (186787). From here follow RR waymarks back to car park.

Lunch/Accommodation: Swinton Bivouac café and lodges (closed January) – 01765-680900; swintonestate.com)

Info: Harrogate TIC (01423-537300): yorkshire.com

@somerville_c

First published in: The Times Click here to view a map for this walk in a new window

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Low cloud was swirling clear of the fell tops along Wharfedale as we set out from Grassington. The village was packed, as busy as ever, but ten minutes put us high above the stone-built houses on a path rising through sheep pastures to the walled track of Edge Lane, where no-one came or went.

The narrow squeeze stiles between the fields were each sealed with a tiny wicket gate on a powerful spring that shut smartly behind us with a rat trap snap. Nothing was more reminiscent of our former walks in this delectable dale than that sharp ‘crack’ of wood on stone – though the hinges have been modernised since the days when they were bodged from the soles of discarded rubber boots.

Wharfedale ran away north-west, exuding its habitual aura of peace and plenty, neat green fields walled with stone barns dotted here and there, the gently ‘inbye’ grazing rising to wild moorland tops with rugged profiles, and a far view of Pendle Hill’s broad back some 25 miles off in Lancashire.

Pine trees sighed in the wind around Wise House. Across the cleft of Hebden Beck the ground rose abruptly, too steep for farming, a jumble of red-brown bracken and pale grey rocks fallen from the scars or gritstone cliffs at the rim of the valley.

Down at Hole Bottom we teetered across Hebden Beck’s slippery stepping stones, collecting a boot full of beck water apiece. Scale Haw Force’s waterfall crashed down its rock steps just upstream, a fine noisy spectacle.

A steep climb through meadows led to a zigzag path up through the coarse gritstone rocks of Scale Haw where we came upon a large sleepy slow worm, the smooth bronze belly distended with its latest meal.

A blasting wind up at Scar Top, a puzzling scramble down hard-to-read paths on a bracken slope, and we were threading the walled lanes of Hebden towards the green and level homeward path beside the peat-brown River Wharfe.

How hard is it? 6½ miles; a moderate walk by field and fell paths; rough going just below Scar Side House

Start: Grassington National Park Centre car park, BD23 5LB (OS ref SE 003637)

Getting there: Bus 72 (Skipton-Buckden)
Road – on B6265 Wharfedale road.

Walk (OS Explorer OL2): Left into village; right (Hebden Road); in 200m right (Low Lane, High Lane). In 250m, left (006640, gate, yellow arrow/YA). Field path (stiles, YAs) to Edge Lane (013641). Right, in 550m, at gate, left (017638, ‘Hebden Gill’). Just before High Garnshaw, right (020643, gate), down fields to drive (022642), down to Hole Bottom (024641). Right along drive. In 200m, left (024639, fingerpost/FP ‘Edge Top’) to cross Hebden Beck by stepping stones (NB: if beck swollen, return to drive, left to Hebden).

From stepping stones, right along opposite bank. In 250m grassy track rises to gate (025637). Either continue parallel to Hebden Beck to cross B6265 in Hebden (see last paragraph below); or to continue this route, don’t go through gate, but turn left uphill along wall. Near top, bear left to wicket gate (026639). Grassy path up through rocks to Scar Top House (028639). Right (FP) to cross drive, stiles, FPs to pass Scar Side House (028637). Down through bracken (Access Lane = a bit of a scramble – pick your own path!) to stile/wicket gate at bottom (027635). Next gate, fields and FPs down to cross B6265 in Hebden (026632).

Ahead down road, in 150m, left (027630, kissing gate, FP); follow ‘Suspension Bridge’ beside Hebden Beck to road (027624). Right; in 150m left (‘Dales Way’ FP). Right along Dales Way for 1½ miles to Linton Falls (001634); right (FP) to car park.

Conditions: Hebden Beck is crossed by stepping stones. Slope below Scar Side is steep and scrambly in places – for adventurous walkers!

Info: National Park Centre, Grassington (01756751690), yorkshire.com
satmap.com; ramblers.org.uk
More walks info: @somerville_c