Kirby Knowle to Felixkirk and Boltby

8.5 miles                            Grey, damp and still

We reached Kirby Knowle from the A19 Knayton turn-off and parked at the side of the road near to St Wilfred's Church.

Today's route from The Walker's Guide to The Hambleton Hills

St Wilfred's Church, Kirby Knowle

Visibility was poor as we set off bearing right towards Upsall Village, which Tom Scott Burns explains is from the old Norse word 'up-salir' meaning 'high dwellings'.  Just before reaching Upsall we turned off the road into fields and followed yellow way-marks and a faint track across the meadows to a beck.  As we crossed the beck we saw a stone clearly engraved 'The Turton Beckstead' embedded in the dry stone wall adjacent to the beck. TSB informs us that in the 1860s some mourners were carrying a body to Kirby Knowle for burial.  The bearers set down the coffin to briefly rest at this spot but on lifting it again it felt much lighter and they discovered that the corpse had disappeared. The empty coffin was buried and the site at Beckstead Wood became known as Lost Corpse End. 

We leave the Upsall Road

A faint track...

Lost Corpse End!

Clive reads the engraved rock...

The Turton Beckstead

We continued to the next field where we saw a sheep in a distressed state.  It had wandered near to a fencepost where loops of barbed wire had been carelessly left .  The sheep had caught itself in the wire and the more it had tried to free itself the more entangled it had become until it was now unable to move, held close to the fencepost.  A couple of years ago we came across a cow in similar circumstances and were unable to do anything but try and find a farmer.  Since then Clive has carried a Leatherman tool in his rucksack, determined never to be caught out again and he swiftly climbed the fence and set to work cutting through the wire, which was round the sheep's neck, body and legs.  She seemed to know he was trying to help and stood still through most of the procedure. Twenty minutes later she was free and dashed off to rejoin the flock.

"Help!"

Well and truly snagged

Clive gets to work with wire cutters

A long job to free it

Cutting the last bit free from its neck

It rejoins the flock and off they go....

The field path exited onto a road and we turned right to enter Felixkirk.  We entered the churchyard and found to our surprise that the church was padlocked. The last time we passed by here we had been able to enter and look around but this time we were restricted to walking round the graveyard where we read the sad epitaph of Hannah Cornforth:

'Twenty years I was a maid

One year I was a wife.

Eighteen hours a mother,

and then departed life.'

Felixkirk

St Felix Church, barred to visitors

Hannah Cornforth's epitaph

Leaving Felixkirk we turned right at the road junction and passed the lodge to Mount St John, once a preceptory in the days of Henry I. We turned right down a lane towards Cinque Cliff House where the path has been diverted by the new owners, through fields around the back of the house.  We came to a gate with a nice wall alongside and this made an ideal resting place while we enjoyed our coffee and scones.  Much refreshed we set off into a lane which led out onto the road where we turned left to walk into Thirlby.  This village has several attractive weathervanes, I wondered if a local blacksmith was responsible.

Weathervanes in Thirlby

We walked through the village eventually coming to a ford where Bob Hunter, who worked with 'Mouseman' Thompson of nearby Kilburn, and whose trademark is a wren, has a workshop.

The Wren Man

Several houses in the village have house place-names bearing the wren motif

Just past the ford we left the village through a gateway into a field where we followed a barely discernible track to Tang Hall, crossing a couple of becks and an unusual stile on the way.

Very greasy wood on this unusual stile

In the end we jumped for it!

We followed the beck to the village of Boltby coming out next to a pack horse bridge at Gurtof Beck where someone had set a couple of mosaic like tiles into the wall.  We waked through the village past the church of All Saints, admiring the colourful Virginia creepers on some house walls.

Gurtof Beck

All Saints Church, Boltby

We turned left at the far end of the village and followed a series of field boundaries which climbed to the right of Ravensthorpe Manor, a modern 'big house'.  We descended into some fields of horses and crossed the elevated ridge of Birk Bank back to Kirby Knowle and our car.

Clive shares his apple

By Ravensthorpe Manor

Across Birk Bank

Back to St Wilfred's!