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Castleton on the North York Moors is a place I've been through a thousand times but have never walked from, can’t think why because this route turned out really nice. These days there is an out of town carpark, a good spot to pull in, with views down Commondale. But that valley wasn’t for us. The info board told us the territory was owned by Viscount Downe, a lamb gingerly nibbled a gorse bush, the mobile library arrived and we set off.

A few minutes later, at the outskirts of Castleton, a path leaves the road at a sweet little graveyard, passes a congregation of antique caravans and the signs point to the Esk Valley Way. This is not the Esk Valley, it’s a side valley to that river, we were doing Danby Dale.

And this lower portion of Danby Dale was for a mile dozens of charming little hedged pastures, lush land. Further up the valley, beyond today’s walk, there is Botton Village where disciples of Rudolph Steiner practice biodynamic farming. Well I wouldn’t know a biodynamic pasture from an ordinary organic one or just a plain plot even if it were soaking my socks which they were, but this is good grass, plus flowers and the big ears of watching wary deer.

Each side of the valley the land rises high, traffic on the elevated Blakey Ridge road moved silently. It was quiet all day.

After a bit on Danby Beck there's a crossing of the valley floor on a lane that had no traffic but a bit of a hill so there was a view and sight of a stubby church.

And then we climbed onto the eastern flank of the valley, taking public paths on the open access land and had our sandwiches, gazed over an expanse of dale that seemed, in human terms, weekday asleep, but rooks were distant raucous, lambs gambolled, pigeons skimmed and rabbits scurried.

The footpath parallels a wall that divides moor from farmland. Heather curls down from the moor but the slope is bracken. To keep the path open aim your boots at the fragile unfurling bracken fronds, this can become obsessive.

We turned to cross the valley again. The rooks have their nests tiered in ash, next door were greylag geese, we skirted them. One wonders what these two species, amongst the most intelligent of birds, make of their neighbours.

A half mile had posh houses, posh horses and less than perfect wall stiles. There is a strange subterranean construction by the lane from the last house. And then the highpoint of the walk, the five minute ascent of the hillock that is Danby Low Moor. From the top the views up Danby Dale are all the way, look behind for the slant of Castleton.

We came in at the village’s bottom end, had a gander at Graham Lowe's ace photographs in the Montage Studio Gallery, a cup tea at the café opposite and so reinforced did the last half mile incline up through the linear village.