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.

Nun Monkton makes for a festive family walk near York. The first thing to catch the eye is the mega maypole on the village green, but that’s for the spring.

A flight of ducks homed in on the village pond as we set off on a rapid mile or so with nothing to challenge us navigationally, plus - no quagmires, no barbed wire and on the flat.

There were ponies, sprouts, sheep, a sparrow hawk watched from a wood, a stoat nipped across the track and blackbirds did their dipping flight from berried hedge to berried hedge. Sloes, as in gin, hung heavy on the bushes. Willows have aspirin in their bark. Free-range hens speckled a pasture and emitted a diffused and pleasant soft clucking.

By now childhood attention spans might have stretched to boredom point, and your ability to field natural history questions might be exhausted. Help is at hand; the walk takes a diverting boost at the River Ouse with boats and the spectacular weir. The weir was sound and fury, the steps next to it that the water ricochets down is a fish ladder, not as in a Guinness advert. Tide marks show how potent this river can be and the floodbank is not high, more a ripple in the pasture

There's a good chance you’ll see water birds, a grey heron lifted on lazy wings, ducks pottered. We came round a curve to see a flock of Canada geese cruising peacefully in mid river. Like the great white hunter I readied to approach with camera. My navigator said ‘won’t you frighten them? 'No' I hissed, 'they are very calm birds’ which they normally are. Perhaps it was seasonal nerves but after one snap they freaked and blasted off, a dozen upstream a dozen down. I felt guilty, but it’s not the season for that.

In fact the variously spiritual might enjoy this walk. Christians will be encouraged by the elegant flying buttressed spire of All Saints at Newton-on-Ouse. Mystics will draw energy from walking as we do with the flow of the great river. Pagans have all the nature and the aforementioned maypole.

Later on there were inquisitive mute swans out for a family float, mum and similar dad and two full-sized mottled youngsters.

Across the other side of the river is the parkland of Beningbrough Hall where squirrels leapt from top to top in the specimen trees. And we’d got back to Nun Monkton. Whatever your persuasion do have a look in St Mary’s for, according to Sir Nikolaus Pevsner, the ‘finest stained glass in the West Riding’. It’s by William Morris, all chiselled chins, lovely loose locks and energising foliage.