Hawnby, Easterside Hill and Shaken Bridge

7.5 miles                                 Clear sky, raw wind

We approached Hawnby from the B1257 Stokesley to Helmsley Road which we left at the Laskill turn-off.  We drove through the top village and continued down to the houses of Hawnby Bridge. Tom Scott Burns explains that the village was so divided because in the 1750s a zealous landlord turned out all the Methodists from their houses.  They moved a short distance away where they built some small houses and a Wesleyan Chapel, completed in 1770.  We parked behind this Chapel where parking is free for about a dozen cars.

Today's walk from The Walker's Guide to the Hambleton Hills

Clive walking through Hawnby Bridge

Leaving the car park we turned left into Hawnby Bridge, crossed the road at the junction and went through the gate (seen in the above photo) into a field following the way-marks and a faint trail in the grass.   We crossed several meadows to Ladhill Beck after which we had a long gentle climb to some woodland before exiting on a road near to Easterside Farm.  We followed the road for a short time in the shadow of Easterside Hill, before leaving it to follow a farm track to High Banniscue Farm.

An indistinct track

Crossing Ladhill Beck

Looking back towards Hawby

Just past the farm the track circumnavigated the distinct shape of Pepper Hill and we walked into a very cold head wind.  The outside temperature gauge on my car had reported 4 degrees at Hawby and the wind chill was a shock to us after a long summer of warm walks.  On the eastern side of Pepper Hill we saw the damaged wall and impact crater made by a German Dornier in the last war when it crashed on 17th December 1942.  We had earlier inspected a memorial window to the airmen at Hawnby Church.

Pepper Hill

Circumnavigating Pepper Hill

Hole and crater made by German Bomber

Memorial window to the German Airmen at Hawnby Church

We continued around the side of Easterside Hill, eventually crossing the Laskill to Hawnby road, now looking for a sheltered spot where we could stop for coffee.  We descended across some meadows, and after carefully avoiding a group of about a dozen horses we arrived at the ruins of Grimes Holme, where we sat on slabs of rock in the lee of the building to enjoy our scones.

Descending across meadows

Coffee and scones at Grimes Holme

Leaving the old farmstead we walked down to cross a wooden gated bridge over the River Rye at a point which TSB says is often frequented by herons.  Not today, unfortunately, and we crossed a couple of fields to join a farm track that led past Fair Hill Farm and the ruins of Broadway Foot, which appeared to have been a thatched building before it was burned to the ground.

Crossing the River Rye

Joining the farm track past Fair Hill Farm

Weathervane at outbuilding, Broadway Foot

Sad ruin of Broadway Foot

The farm lane led us down to the road and Shaken Bridge.  TSB tells us that its name derives from the Old English 'sceacre' or robber.  ie Robber's Bridge.  Parts of the old stone bridge looked new and we were unsure whether stone had been replaced or cleaned.  We crossed and after walking on the road for a hundred yards we turned sharp left followed a farm road uphill until we came to East Ley Wood.  Bearing right up the track an old barn came into view, a building we recognised as one we have approached from other directions on other walks.  We walked through a gate into East Ley Wood.

Approaching Shaken Bridge

Looking downstream

The Old Barn... again

Gate into East Ley Woods

Someone has added these hand drawn leather patches to gate posts in the area - their calling card?

The path meanders along the side of the wood for 1.5 miles, eventually emerging at Murton Bank top.  We turned right into the road and walked downhill coming to a 'surprise view' at Peak Scar Top, a short distance down the road.

Alongside East Ley Wood for 1.5 miles

Turn into the road and approach Peak Scar Top...

...where you get a surprise view of Hawnby below

We now had a steep descent down Murton Bank and enjoyed a fine view down to Hawnby and the houses at Hawnby Bridge below us.  We returned to the car and after removing boots were soon warming ourselves by the fire in the Inn at Hawnby while discussing the highlights of the walk over a pint of Timothy Taylor Landlord.

Hawnby Bridge below and Hawnby above

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!

A week's trek in Catalonia

Coastal walk near Cadaques

Trek photos here