Please click on "Map" to see a cartographic map view of the route and "Hybrid" to see the combined map and Satellite. "Terrain" shows the contours of land over and around the route.

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. Click on "Open Lightbox" to see the Google Map in its own window.

The two hikers icon shows the start of the route. Click on the hikers to get the route direction - clockwise or anticlockwise.

Please note that the outline route is a guide only and on full or near full zoom cannot be guaranteed to follow every twist and turn of the route described.

A Landrover disgorged a party of beaters, men in tweed with guns lurked in the woods, others brandished orange flags, but the day held its quiet as we passed close by the frontage of Arden Hall and began a long track climb.

Salvos of gunfire broke the morning, reverberating up Thorodale.

We gained 400 feet of altitude in less than a mile and then panned out at a thousand feet. Twenty lapwings flew over the pastureland and ice glazed the puddles. The view east is terrific - in sequence - Coomb Hill, Hawnby Hill, Easterside Hill, Pepper Hill then Cowhouse Bank and Beadlam Rigg, the shapes show the geological connection between the Tabular and Hawnby Hills. The sky was blue with wispy cirrus clouds, but below these a slick from heather burning was falling into Bilsdale.

Then the route joins the Cleveland Way and there are grand long distance views west off the escarpment to the Dales. Turn away from these with both regret and anticipation because you don’t have to go far to be faced with a dramatic scene. Suddenly the path takes a steep deep drop into the head of the Thorodale, the opportunity for the aforementioned muddy bum should you be too proud to take a trekking pole.

The descent done there’s a tracery of one-step streams but hints here of the powerful flood of 2005, and then the path enters the woods for two miles on the sunny side of the valley.

Well here there could be the poetry in motion stuff about the rays filtering through the half bare branches, the colour, ambience and the intricate sonics of the ecosystem. But the dominant impression was of the rusty cries and creaky flight of the multitudinous pheasants and the volleys of death in the afternoon. And as I write I am looking at the latest copy of the National Park’s ‘Moors Messenger’ and the headline ‘Keeping the Peace of the Park’ above words on Apache helicopters.

Eventually we reached pastures again and watched insects in a hatch the size of a dustbin lid dance and rise in the warmed air. Mount Pleasant is a farmstead as named but for its multi-combustibles bonfire. And that’s about it, another beck another bridge, and note the bridges are now fixed, so it’s time to reclaim this wonderful walking territory.