Bransdale is hazy with heat when George Wilkinson visits to complete a figure-of-eight route.

BRANSDALE was hazy, in the middle of a heat wave, in the middle of the North York Moors National Park, with just a bit of air edging in from the north-east.

We ambled down a farm track, into a dip where Shaw Beck ran under willow, birch, hazel, oak and alder, and hens scuttled in a farmyard. We dallied at Hodge Beck, where my navigator leafed through the paper shale for fossil impressions, and I turned rocks in the stream.

Stork House is at the crossover of today’s figure of eight. Stay awhile, enjoy the dominant valley view, and ponder the ruin of the once-fine farmstead. The National Trust acquired the property in 1972, along with 1,800 acres of Bransdale.

The heather starts above Stork House. The moors were primed for the grouse-shooting season. Bees visited the vivid bell heather that lined the dry banks of sunken tracks and soon all will be purple when the ling flowers.

A Kawasaki Mule 4x4 transported fleece, a large shiny red Case tractor followed and Lambfold Hill is the top spot, at a thousand feet with a grand view and, as on the OS map, a Pile of Stones.

Then we went back down to Stork House. The sun had shrivelled the fireweed on its walls but its proud stand of thistles thrive and its threshing machinery is in the Ryedale Folk Museum at Hutton-le-Hole.

Low Wood is below, with bracken and above that very old oak trees, and we each acquired orbits of fast and furious flies, kept a foot or two away by insect repellent. Someone had lingered here, and cooled in the stream perhaps, by the weir and the bridge, because there were dead campfire embers in a pan-sized ring of stone.

Something dimpled the water, but we didn’t hang around and it was nice to get out of the sticky woods on to airy grasslands with curlews on song for an easy last mile, with the softest of frets from the sea 20 miles away.


Directions

When in doubt look at the map. Check your position at each point. Keep straight on unless otherwise directed. (wm=waymark) 

1. From parking area (Moorhouses, Low and High Lidmoor), metalled road (dead-end sign). Right at T-junction near house (sign Low and High Lidmoor), gate, road becomes track, downhill, gated bridge, uphill.

2. Into farmyard, right, between house and buildings (sign High Lidmoor), gate, 50 yards. At track bend, fieldgate, straight on (wm). Gate (wm), left downhill on grass, gate (wm nearby). At telegraph pole about 150 yards before wood (fingerpost), left downhill by wall, path in trees and right on stream bank.

3. Footbridge over Hodge Beck, path uphill in wood, left turn (fingerpost, wm), gate (wm).

4. Up through ruins of Stork House/farmyard, grassy walled track 25 yards.

Gate to moor (wm) and fork left to path uphill. A fork re-joins route, narrow path in heather.

5. Right to good track (wm post).

6. At tracks junction at quarry, grass centred track on right (no sign), uphill.

7. Pass the Pile of Stones/cairn to your left, downhill 100 yards, path on right (wm post), angles down hillside, fork left at ‘Y’ junction.

8. Path to right of Stork House (wm posts), downhill by wall, path in bracken, stile (wm). TAKE CARE, immediately steps, banks, ditches on/by narrow path in bracken. Right at deep ditch (wm post), path in wood with sheer drops to your left, path bridges side stream.

9. Footbridge over Hodge Beck, steep path uphill 100 yards. Right (fingerpost), path angles uphill in bracken 300 yards, gate (wm) into field, straight on, stile, narrow ‘bridge’, diagonally uphill across field, gate in corner, 25 yards, fieldgate on left, 1 o’clock, ladderstile, by wall ahead, three gates, track, 100 yards.

10. Left to good track, two gates/cattlegrids. Left to road uphill.


Fact file

Distance: 5.5 miles.

General location: North York Moors.

Road route: Via Kirkbymoorside then Fadmoor.

Start: Moorhouses parking area, Bransdale.

Right of way: Public.

Date walked: July 2013.

Lavatories: None.

Refreshments: Inns and cafes Kirkbymoorside and Helmsley.

Tourist information: Pickering TIC 01751 473791.

Map: OS Explorer OL27 North York Moors western.

Terrain: Moor and valley.

Difficulty: Moderate.

Please observe the Country Code and park sensibly. While every effort is made to provide accurate information, walkers set out at their own risk.