Iron age remains

Distance: Five and a half miles.

General Location: North York Moors.

Start: Pub - The Lion Inn at Blakey and end at Rosedale Abbey.

Right of Way: Public.

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

Dogs: Legal bar 100 yards. ‘Well behaved and clean dogs are welcome’ on the Moorsbuses, but the drivers have the ‘ultimate discretion’.

Date walked: July 2006.

Road Route: Moorsbus.

Car Parking: Moorsbus.

Lavatories: Rosedale Abbey.

Refreshments: Pub - Lion Inn at Blakey, pubs, inns and cafes at Rosedale Abbey.

Terrain: Valleyside

Points of interest: Rosedale might mean ‘valley of the horses’.

Difficulty: Easy.

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.

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.

If you can’t immediately see the walk route on the Google Map, please refresh the screen.

The Moorsbus took us up through Hutton-le-Hole and over the moors all the way to the top and the Lion Inn at Blakey. We were wearing our Moorsbus badges, a capital ‘M’, or if upside down a ‘W’ for ‘walker’, or otherwise if, as the case, map and compass were left on the bus.

I was too concerned with berating the culprit and left my expensive sun hat in the pub.

Nevermind, within minutes of leaving the heaving hostelry we were on our track and this route didn’t require map or compass, plus, it being a tennis final day, sunhat.

And the angst of loss was blown away by the views of the majestic valley. Rosedale is one of the four ‘long valleys’; it channels down from the geological centre of the North York Moors, the east/west watershed, and runs south, deep and wide for miles.

One takes the trackbed of the Rosedale railway line that serviced the western side of the valley. This was built in 1865 to carry ironstone from the mines to the many Middlesbrough furnaces. The 14 mile line of the track is clear to see as it loops round the wild head of the valley and along the opposite flank, the east side.

It’s this east side of the valley that holds the eye. Looking across as one walks is easy, the track bed is smooth even 70 years after it was abandoned. There is hardly any gradient, an altitude of around a thousand feet is held for 5 miles.

After a while one passes opposite 15 arches on the east flank, these were calcinating kilns for roasting the ironstone to make it lighter for transport, 300,000 tons were produced in 1864. Further along, and again on the far side are short terraces that were miners’ dwellings, now mostly holiday cottages.

The modern history of the Rosedale line significantly concerns the battle over its status, especially for cyclists, it being a near perfect riding surface.

The vegetation is a nice two tone, the bright green of the bilberry and the darker heather, and of course the latter will be purple in August sometime.

There's a fenced off shaft, for ironstone again, dug 275 foot deep. From here there's a gill running down to the hamlet of Thorgill. But we stay on the line and pass a flamboyant and lettered bench.

From now on the valley takes a more complex shape, is part filled with humps and hills and soon caravans. Luckily sight of these doesn’t last long, because we leave the line and do the only bit of this route that isn’t dead easy, a steepish twisting decent and then a crossing through of all things a mini golf course to come out at Rosedale Abbey for a cuppa and a wait for the Moorsbus.

Our ride home involved a change at Hutton-le-Hole where we learned that our map and compass were safe, watched the vintage tractors, had a celebratory ice cream and viewed the photos of cornfield flowers at the Ryedale Folk Museum. The Moorsbus is fun. Anyone seen my green Tilley sun hat? Had been rather attached to it, there should be my name and phone number in the internal pocket.

Image Gallery

Please click on the word "Pictures" to toggle the thumbnails on and off. Hover your mouse over the image to see the forward and back arrows to view the gallery. 

{smoothgallery folder=images/stories/488Rosedale}

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Copyright (C) 2007 Alain Georgette / Copyright (C) 2006 Frantisek Hliva. All rights reserved.

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