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Welburn is very near Castle Howard but we turned our backs on the big show for starters and left the village in the other direction, stopping on the outskirts for a minute to view the new village hall designed in eco-friendly style by York’s Native Architecture. Its recycled alloy roof mitigated the guilt of all those cans.

A straight stone track called Whitwell Road cuts through the green and temporarily yellow land, eventually to intersect the A64 which would be unnerving for the walker.

But just as the blur of metal began to sound we turned into The Rashes that are nearly nettle free fields and were set up for a two mile approach to Castle Howard.

From Monument Farm the gilded pillar at the end of The Avenue is but a field away, horsechestnuts were lit with creamy candles. Damper lands were creamy with honeysuckle flowers. Do yellowhammers need to show their colours with extra vigour in the acres yellow with rape, a crop that has exulted this year at escaping from its fields to colonise verges, corners and fallow earth?

This walk is entirely in the Howardian Hills Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty, it’s mostly farmland, civilised, but in the modern fashion there's probably more chance of bits of wildlife than ten years ago. It’s certainly easier for the walker to see, paths are well signed, gates are manageable, useful especially on this route which is rather notchy, manufactured for effect rather than an obvious journey.

The route homes in on the fantasy land, the horizon teases now and then with strange shapes, then all is there to see, for free – The Pyramid, The Mausoleum and the big house. The Mausoleum is displayed with the most reverence, on a hill of pasture, elevated above the trees. The south frontage of the house glinted with fountain spray, but you view this over arable land. The stately plough of modern agriculture had shaved The Pyramid and its Dalek like sentinels, not perhaps as planned in 1728.

After one of England’s favourite stately homes there was a last treat, England’s favourite wild flower, a sea of bluebells on East Moor Banks, one of the best places around for these stars of the colour calendar.