461 Hutton-le-Hole Description and Information | Walks around southern areas of Moors

Wanderlust Home

Walks: Descriptions

461 Hutton-le-Hole Description and Information

Written by the Wanderlust Team

Friday, 30 November 2007

Set in stone

Distance: Five and a half miles.

General Location: North York Moors.

Start: Hutton-le-Hole.

Right of Way: Public, and Right to Roam under the CROW Act. Check for Open Access Restrictions on www.countrysideaccess.gov.uk.

Dogs: Illegal.

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

Date walked: Saturday 17 December 2005.

Road Route: From A170 a half mile east of Kirkbymoorside, north signed Hutton-le-Hole.

Car Parking: Hutton-le-Hole carpark, winter honesty box, was £1.50.

Lavatories: Carpark.

Refreshments: Pub and cafes - The Crown inn.

Tourist & Public Transport Information: Pickering TIC 01751 473791. Ryedale Folk Museum Tel: 01751 417367

Terrain: Mostly moorland.

Points of interest: Ryedale Folk Museum, it’s good - http://www.ryedalefolkmuseum.co.uk.

Difficulty: Moderate if no snow or thick mist.

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.

Open lightbox

Hutton-le-Hole, the famously pretty village of the North York Moors, was winter quiet; no sheep on the green, few people eating ice cream, a cold clear day, walking weather.

The route skirts the Folk Museum for a free peek at the ye-olde shops, the heather thatch and the splendid cruck style manor house that was reassembled here.

Then Fairy Call Beck, as pretty as its name, the first touch on today's main pleasure, and then a pleasant bit of rough pasture and then the real start, at a place of picnics a plenty, Loskey Bridge, and from there to trace the water, now called Loskey Beck, deep into the moors.

Snow fell, one tiny flake in every cubic metre of air, the beck ran clear but a foot or two across, dancing round the boulders, eddying at roots and skidding over smooth slabs of sandstone. We kept approximately to its line mile by mile. The alder trees, quite small but old, are just tall enough to show above the ravine. By small waterfalls the ice coated grass to crystal fingers, ice crunched when trod and we moseyed on, twisting and turning, following the good clear path, for this has long been a popular illegal walk, and now thanks to the Right to Roam I can write about it, and it is sweet. The surroundings are of heather, not some extreme monoculture but a pattern with grasses and billberry.

Before we lost all shelter we took a sandwich stop; there are places a plenty for this. And then pushed on. After a major side beck the going got a little slower, the path split to uncertainties and we crossed the water, now a flow quite slight and took the easier going up the other bank.

Having imperceptibly gained an altitude of 800 feet you will meet a shooters’ track swinging round. And shortly after that a way back down, a good route, first a firm clear path one foot wide then a broader grassy track, and all the while grand views south, off the slope of moor to Ryedale and the small hills inbetween and the spire at Appleton-le-Moors. Despite a day of southern aspect sunshine the puddles were still frozen. The walking surface is for a short stretch metalled as there's common route with the drive to Spaunton Lodge. But for the last leg, which slices down, there's grass again, and you are delivered back to Hutton-le-Hole, and I can't think of a nicer afternoon’s walking here than this.

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/461Hutton-le-Hole}

Comments

Add New

RSS