Rosedale

"Welcome to Hamer Moor" reads the new sign that the North York Moors National Park has put up at a little car park high on the heather east of Rosedale. It was a bleak winter's day but sometimes it will be buzzing here as a staging point on the Lyke Wake Walk.

Just in case a mist came down we set a compass at 250 degrees, but soon found a path near a drystone wall which was easier than roughing it on the invisible bridleway, hereabouts you have the right to roam.

To the south there's sight of the main and pasture-patterned part of the valley of Hamer Beck.

We crossed this valley in its shallow fade-out top.

The compass bearing set at the start was good enough again, taking us past some beautiful grouse butts like rings of bilberry tossed on the heather. There were white-topped sticks coincident with the route, these are not for walkers, but perhaps prevent shooters shooting each other.

That's the first one-and-a-third miles done, the next had us speeding on a good track north, above and parallel to North Dale which you see from its beginning where it forks from Rosedale to its spectacular divide at West Gill and North Gill.

Down below, in the deep valley, Coal Pit Hill looked like golf greens gone native, up here at a remote 1,000ft a couple pushed a plastic-covered bairn in an off-road pram.

There's an interesting stone and then, just before the track ends, what seems just an old stone barn.

But on the far side it has crude lancet windows and, 20 yards down the slope, there's a mysteriously gurgling spring.

This is Job's Well, obviously holy, and also "chalybeate", that is full of the local iron salts. Strengthened, as by the job, not pray by Job or dubious liquid, we faced a half-mile that might have been testing, not navigationally, the dark water of North Gill was our guide, but we were unsure if there was a path.

There was of sorts, for most of the distance except for the last 100 yards of mature heather but, by then, we could see three white stones marking the Lyke Wake Walk.

Now came what might have been the fastest one and a third mile leg were it not that here the popular long-distance route gashes claggily through naturally boggy ground. So it took an extra five or ten minutes, but hardly warranted the chanting of the dismal dirge of "every night and alle".

The Bronze Age mound of Shunner Howe commands the scene.

Fact file

Distance: Four miles.

Time: Two or three hours.

General Location: North York Moors.

Start: GR SE 744 995.

Map: Drawn from OS Explorers 26 and 27, North York Moors western and eastern areas.

Right of Way: Right to roam. No dogs.

Date walked: Sunday, January 22, 2005.

Road Route: From York leave the AI70 at Wrelton. Road signed "Egton 9" from Rosedale Abbey. Two miles, over Hamer Beck, one mile.

Car Parking: Small grassy, muddy area, with sign. Roadside on first side road north.

Lavatories: Rosedale Abbey.

Refreshments: Inns and cafs at Rosedale Abbey.

Tourist & Public Transport Information: The Moors Centre Danby 01287 660540.

Terrain: High moor.

Points of interest: By decree of the Council of Elders of the New Lyke Wake Club you can be a Past Master or Past Mistress of the club if you can handle "any moor by day or night, whether drunk or sober without map or compass". At a guess a recipe for black and blue, but in fact the reward is a "black and purple boutonnire".

Difficulty: Moderate in clear and snow-free weather.

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

Directions

From parking area (info board), left to road, 200 yards. At barrier on right (bridleway sign) aim 250 degrees through spoil heaps and then across moor, gently downhill, pick up field wall to your left and narrow path.

Near shallow bottom of valley, about 100 yards before wall swings left, path angles one o'clock to rough ford over stream (GR SE 735984), path uphill at one o'clock (circa 250 degrees), meets a row of sunken butts.

At about the fourth butt, sharp right 50 yards then left to good track uphill.

Right to stone track at T-junction.

Pass "barn" at Job's Well, 100 yards, junction with an island, left fork to lesser track then path to angle downhill to beck side. Keep above and near beck, some path. Rough ground for last 200 yards to ford.

Right to clear path (three white painted stones nearby).

From Shunner Howe, a mound with a pile of stones, main path back to spoil heaps.

Click here to view a map of the walk

Updated: 16:19 Friday, January 27, 2006