476 Chop Gate Description and Information | Bilsdale

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476 Chop Gate Description and Information

Written by the Wanderlust Team

Friday, 30 November 2007

Stairway to heaven

Distance: Eight and a half miles.

General Location: North York Moors.

Start: Chop Gate.

Right of Way: Public routes and Open Access land. Check for Open Access Restrictions on www.countrysideaccess.gov.uk.

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

Dogs: Were legal under the old but extant Open Access agreement, but now definitely illegal under the Crow Act.

Date walked: Friday 14 April 2006.

Road Route: From York, via Helmsley.

Car Parking: Village Hall, free.

Lavatories: Village Hall.

Refreshments: Pub at Chop Gate - The Buck Inn.

Tourist & Public Transport Information: Helmsley TIC 01439 770173.

Terrain: Mostly moor.

Points of interest: Of lizards Britain has but three species, the sand lizard that is big, rare and doesn’t live up here, the common or viviparous lizard, the slow worm that is legless.

Difficulty: Moderate in good weather.

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

Please click the image below to go to the walking route sketch map and detailed directions, or scroll down to a Google Map of the route, the route description, and an image gallery. Plus you can bookmark this page on your favourite social bookmarking site, and comment on the walk. We hope you enjoy the walk.

Googlemap

Please click on "Map" to see a cartographic map view of the route and "Hybrid" to see the combined map and Satellite. Please use the zoom tools or drag the slider to move in close or to zoom out (or use mousewheel zoom). Use the pan tools to move the map vertically and horizontally or place your mouse over the map and it changes to a hand; click your mouse to "grab" the map to manually scroll the map in any direction. The two hikers icon shows the start of the route and clicking on it will show the route starting direction.

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Harry Mead put on his countryside historian hat recently when he wrote an article in which he complained that the Badger Stone at the head of Bransdale had disappeared off the latest Ordnance Survey map for the North York Moors and indeed it has. I had a search and found the stone named in 1857 script on www.old-maps.co.uk, and then surprisingly it turned up on the Defra map that one uses to check the open access status of any portion of land. It seemed a visit was in order so off we went to Chop Gate in Bilsdale.

Soon we were climbing to the moors, leaving the last of the lumpen sandstone walls, and levelling to the tops. In his article Harry Mead had also bemoaned the downgrading of the Cleveland Hills by name and thus distinction. Certainly on this walk they look superb and you’ll see to the plains through the saddle in them, the one that’s flanked by the Wainstones.

We marched on to the highest trig point on the map, at 1500 feet and one of the best. People flock to the moors for the late summer purple but often there's heat haze. Spring brought long panoramic views - the ‘Cleveland Classics’, Teeside laid out on the flats with the sea beyond, to the west the Yorkshire Dales, even a power station York way.

We lounged in the lee of the trig point and mused about the lizard we had seen, a viviparous lizard. This is the best time to see these six inch reptiles because they bask more in the spring, trying to warm up in any sunshine, it’s also mating time which involves the male seizing the female in his jaws…

Then we focused on the Badger Stone, and Mr Mead is right, it’s impressive, visible near a mile away, the only big rock on the heather. Close up it’s actually two rocks side by side, each, and pardon the image, larger than a caravan. The sandstone is undercut and smoothed and clearly it’s not much visited because there’s only one name carved on it, and on the top, thankfully undisturbed, the Badger has a thick thatch of heather.

Views down Bransdale opened up, the Hawnby Hills showed, a mountain biker zipped by, and Tripsdale was to cross. Now this is a significantly steep valley, a long time SSSI with a beck and crags and birch and oak. The hairpin bends of the shooters’ track took the sting out of the climb and after a bit more on the flat, there’s a direct descent straight down to Chop Gate.

Image Gallery

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