458 Coxwold Description and Information | Walks around southern areas of Moors

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458 Coxwold Description and Information

Written by the Wanderlust Team

Friday, 30 November 2007

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Distance: Eight miles.

General Location: Edge of Howardian Hills.

Start: Coxwold.

Right of Way: Public.

Dogs: Legal.

Date walked: Saturday 12 November 2005.

Road Route: From York, A19 then via Easingwold.

Car Parking: At village hall, free.

Lavatories: At village hall.

Refreshments: At Coxwold tearoom seasonally weekends, also a pub, Fauconberg Arms. The Abbey Inn at Byland Abbey is owned by English Heritage

Tourist & Public Transport Information: North York Moors Centre at Sutton Bank 01845 522755.

Map: Based on OS Explorer 299 Ripon & Boroughbridge, Easingwold.

Terrain: Farmland, low hills.

Points of interest: Newburgh Priory open April, May and June, Wednesdays and Sundays 2-6. Website: http://www.newburghpriory.co.uk.

Difficulty: Good going.

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

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Coxwold, we came here for the cakes from the prize-winning Village Store but they were spoken for and the bow-tied shopkeeper wouldn’t take a bribe. The walk was more than consolation. A long-time lovely village this, the unicorns of feudal lord on the houses. Though the pub was shut there is Shandy Hall where on the walls it reads ‘Here dwelt Laurence Sterne many years… here he wrote Tristram Shandy and the Sentimental Journey’.

Our journey opened out with a white gate to pastures shaded ridge and furrow and sight of Kilburn's White Horse from an aspect that flatters its awkward shape. So far rather nice, sunshine on and sunshine off, a spinney or a line of trees the leaves still left intense. Stubble fields, escarpment high behind, and fallen ash erupting cramp balls of black fungi.

Easy walking on smooth lovely land, the camber of low hills, various daisies in flower, a sequence of neat bridges over becks or drainage ditches, the vegetation still green before the hammer of the frost.

Pond Bay, site of 60 hectares of twelfth-century bream ponds. An ash wood by a stream. Good signposts, and then from half a mile away the sight of the high remnants of the Cistercian Abbey. Then Pond Bay number two.

The Abbey Inn was open, the Abbey, arches and all, was closed.

Rougher pastures now, tufted grass, a studding of some scrub, an owl box that reminds - the best news of the week – eagle owls in Yorkshire, six-foot wingspans, fantastic, unless you are a Pekinese tight in talons, torn by beak.

From a low high point, only 250 feet, we stopped to look around, down to a flatness of sheep pastures and winter water, the horse again, and a bonus, framed in a dip in the hills the high ground 20 miles across the Vale of York, the Yorkshire Dales.

No eagle owl, but a big raptor that flew in exhilarating low, dead-level, horizontal glides. And nearer a pair of little kestrels lifted, hovered at thirty feet and dived. Hares ran near the Grange. We moved out of the National Park, hedges interesting and with field maple, mostly there is not a building in sight, though a barn with pond, and a farm not the prettiest with a slurry slurping yard.

A sign proclaims ‘Howardian Hills AONB’, and true, beautiful, and the acceleration of a very quiet back to nowhere road brought Acorn Hill with oaks, one with straw bales disrespectfully close, and views to Byland Abbey and again the Horse, and a flagpole flew the Yorkshire Rose near Foxfoot Farm.

We felt lucky, pleased, and there was more, Newburgh Priory and around the corner a lake with swans, coots and ducks and up the road further sight of the house.

The last half-mile of pavement was good, yew hedge, weekend tearooms and the Coxwold Pottery especially if you fancy slipwork fish.

Image Gallery

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