Chop Gate

The valley river runs by the car park and the valley side rises steeply and we climbed out of Bilsdale using a path worn deep with time, in the heat of the day, up a gully that had dried out, white sheep bones in the grass, and land that was roughened by old digging for jet.

With the altitude, the climb is 700 feet, Chop Gate diminished but the landscape enlarged, drawing out the Cleveland Hills and the North York Moors.

The climb was done and Noon Hill was high and hot, but it wasn’t the shooting season. The sandwich spot is Cock Howe, a prehistoric burial mound that is adorned with a stone pointed at an angle. One thousand three hundred feet is a good altitude here, but the air wasn’t clear enough to see to Teesside.

Our circuit of the heathers was pleasant, we kept the height for a while, there were a lot of insects of all sorts and then we heard the electronic bleep of a golden plover.We wouldn’t have seen it otherwise, and then it was bleep, bleep, bleep for a hundred yards as it tried to lure us away from its nest and we got a pretend broken wing display. Then the curlews sang and circled and their trills clashed with the notes of the plovers. It was very dry. Now and then there would be a small concrete drinking basin for the grouse, and in one of these was a squirming puddle of probably doomed tadpoles and I suppose we could have sacrificed our water, but it looked like rain.

After a couple of miles of this our top track dipped into Arns Gill where the stream did flow and Head House, an isolated cottage, seemed abandoned. A cuckoo called.

For a while a dark cloud had been spreading and when it covered the sky it emptied, with vigour for over an hour. So we did notlinger near the Bilsdale Transmitting Station or ‘mast’ as it’s called, a slim thousand feet tall.

We made our way down then, jinked around some farms, well actually a complicated and careful manoeuvre through yards, before the fields to Chop Gate, and as a final treat a damp zone was colourful.

Fact file

Distance: Seven miles.

General Location: North York Moors.

Start: Chop Gate.

Right of way: Public and Open Access.

Dogs: Illegal.

Date walked: May 2010.

Road route: B1257.

Car parking: At village hall, signed.

Lavatories: Village hall.

Refreshments: The Buck Inn.

Tourist & public transport information: Great Ayton TIC 01642 722835.

Map: Drawn from OS Explorer OL26 North York Moors western.

Terrain: Valley and moor.

Difficulty: Moderate if fine.

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

When in doubt look at the map. Check your position at each point.

Keep straight on unless otherwise directed.

1 From car park, bridge to track uphill, stile/fieldgate (waymark), 50 yards, path (fingerpost) through gorse.

2 Ignore a waymarked gate on left, path swings right then left uphill, 50 yards (fingerpost), 11 o’clock, stile (waymark), wire fence to left.

3 Stile on left (waymark), stone after ten yards, curve round field corner and up.

4 Stile/fieldgate to moor (waymark), path by wood, joins wider path to Cock Howe, a stone on mound.

5 From Cock Howe straight on for 100 yards and right to track.

6 Left to track at triangular junction.

7 Left at T junction to track downhill, fieldgate/cattlegrid into field, track, fieldgate and swing right by house, bridge, uphill, fieldgate, ignore a left into wood after 50 yards.

8 At right-hand bend downhill turn left uphill towards mast, left fork downhill heading to left of mast, then track curves north away from mast.

9 The route option here is to continue on the track to Cock Howe. Otherwise, look out for conifer wood to right, cross heather to its first and nearest corner, sunken path down beside wood, gateway below wood, two stiles, stile, 1 o’clock for 100 yards, right down by wall, fieldgate, fieldgate (waymark), by fence and trees, track, 10 Fieldgate by farmyard, ten yards, fieldgate and right (waymark), fieldgate into next farmyard, straight on (gates).

11 Fieldgate (waymark) on left at far end of yard after slurry lagoon, left diagonally down across field.

12 Footbridge and stile, left to track, 50 yards, cattlegrid/fieldgate, track on right (fingerpost), fieldgate on right just before house, by hedge 150 yards, fieldgate on left (fingerpost), by hedge to your right. Stile/fieldgate (waymark), track, fieldgate, track.

13 Gates into farmyard, 50 yards, fieldgate and right, down through yard, fieldgate out and left on track (fingerpost) 100 yards downhill, ladderstile on left then right with wall to your right, stile/fieldgate and diagonally left (waymark) stile in lower corner (waymark), follow stream, two gates and two stiles (some waymarks).