Refreshments: None but there is a small village shop.
Tourist & Public Transport Information: York Tourist Information 01904 550099.
Map: OS Explorer 294 Yorkshire Wolds Central.
Terrain: Low hills.
Dogs: Legal.
Points of Interest:
Difficulty: Easy.
Date Walked: August 2007.
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.
Google Map
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Bugthorpe is not the prettiest of names but the village, to quote a local website, ‘being on land owned by the Earl of Halifax has escaped the ravages of modern development’. And it’s just ten miles east of York on the edge slopes of The Wolds.
Swallows swooped around the church and sparrows fizzed from the neat privet hedges that box mature brick houses; the post office is the only sign of commerce.
Bugthorpe had two moats. We wandered out, there was a drop of water in a bit of one shaped ditch, the damsons dripped purple, neat concrete arched a footbridge and the sky held the promise of rain. Thoralby Hall is the only big house on route and it comes quite soon and looks out from pasture slopes to a small valley. There is a horizon of chimney and pylon but this is far away. A silver pheasant scampered along a hedge, the rich scent of damp straw wafted from stacks of big bales, a plough turned the earth, the harvest was almost done.
For a mile you walk the boundary between North and East Yorkshire, it exists as a hedge of thorn with here and there a fruiting of sloe or elderberry. Then the route drops down to a diddy stream that changes name four times in as many miles. It flows in the triumph deserving of a majestic river from Waterloo Beck to Salamanca Beck to Baffham Beck to Bugthorpe Beck. An island of wood is Elba Plantation. Some trees with an identity crisis are merely Beck Plantation. There's an unusual and regular planting of youngish alders.
Luckily, as it’s not on the OS map, a footbridge took us over the beck, the council did a lot of work hereabouts on paths.
A back road with a flicker of fireweed, a view deeper into the Wolds and no traffic took us to another path.
Our favourite part of this walk came after Primrose Hill when the land drops into a wide and open basin, an area called Fitteses, which name foxes me. But there's no doubt the primary title around here, that’s Lord Halifax, and the big place is Garrowby Hall. The Queen stayed here in York’s Ascot week. The Hall is secluded, invisible in woods, no footpath goes nearer than you will be, a mile away.
David Hockney’s ‘Garrowby Hill’ is great, with a torrent of blue road.
We didn’t see any horses, Lord Halifax has a stud, but you will notice a couple of signs warning of ‘bulls’ and ‘cows and calves’. I've rarely had a problem, unless walking with a dog, never seen bloodied and torn anoraks on the grass, horns strung with the congealed entrails of ramblers, sorry about that, but the advice is – at the thunder of hooves release Rover from his leash and let him draw the herd.
The remains of the walk were along Barf Lane and again there was no traffic.
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Walks: Descriptions 
