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.

Richmond, castle and all, takes a while to walk out of, it’s diverting, but eventually we left the cobbles and took a road out west onto the northern flank of Swaledale. This road is a dead-end, it climbs, servicing a line of houses on one side and makes an easy warm up. But after a patch of allotments it was more fun to join the dog walkers and take a path through the adjacent pastures and watch the town’s outskirts draw back and give way to green.

Either way there are benches, cast iron serpent pattern ones, and further on a substantial seat with a plaque for coast to coasters quoting Wainwright on the ‘thrilling view of Richmond’. It was misty but the castle keep stood proud.

We climbed some more, through a gorse band to high pastures and sculpted thorn trees. There's a beacon on the horizon. A heavy-duty double ladderstile attests to seasonal popularity, but there was only a family outing up here with one of the men pushing an all-terrain child buggy along the edge. The mist thickened and filled the valley.

After another mile we reached a spot above Whitfield Scar where in 1606, in fog, a draper called Willance rode his horse off the top of the cliff. It died, he broke his leg and to survive he cut open the horse’s belly and kept his leg warm inside it. Willance lost his leg but over the centuries his adventure has been persistently preserved; there are four monuments to remind, including an obelisk surrounded by pink iron railings.

For us the mist lifted, good for the views up Swaledale, bad for the sight immediately below – the Swale looked good, a steel grey ribbon, but it holds in a curve an encampment of the pastel and white, a caravan site.

Nevermind, and out of sight out of mind we reached a dry side valley called Deep Dale and here the wind funnelled. On the OS map there is marked the Deepdale Tree, we looked, there was no towering specimen but there are perhaps some remnants and clues.

Deep Dale brought us down and back round under the crags, rare for their dominant yew trees, these black swirls and plumes climb the limestone. There are more Coast to Coast signposts and a camping barn.

Next to the path is a terraced football pitch sized site of a fort that was either Romano-British or Bronze or Iron Age. It looks directly down onto the caravan site, ones imagination turned, à la Jeremy Clarkson, to siege engines.

The only woodland part of the route is dominated by the yews, holly tree sized and mixed with ash. Crows circled noisily.

We reached the gorse area again, an acreage half rich yellow and eased down the lane back into the fine old town.