Easy on the eye and easy on the legs, finds George Wilkinson as he takes a gentle stroll round Green Hammerton.

GREEN Hammerton’s green was whirring with lawnmowers while cattle dozed in the adjacent fields. It was a dozy day, a hot noon of hard dark shadows and strong high sun.

Willows soaked up the moisture from a ditch, every now and then a waft of breeze rustled the poplar leaves and we ambled off along Stoned Horse Lane. The farmers were busy though, rushing to bring in cut grass for silage making and at Pool Spring Farm the black and white cattle were shiny.

This is nice countryside, farmland west of York, seas of grain ripe for harvesting, little woods, and it’s quiet, we didn’t get any road noise but a few military planes zoomed over. Moss Hill Farm is not on a hill that’s noticeable, the land is flat, between 40 and 60 feet above sea level and is rather undramatic, but easy on the eye and easy on the legs.

If you keep a sharp lookout, you might catch a glimpse of the White Horse near Kilburn on the Hambleton Hills escarpment, otherwise the horizons are of trees. Easy on the eye, until we reached a half a mile of dead-end back lane that was bordered by a very high new-ish brick wall bristling with CCTV cameras. This is not an area we had visited before and we puzzled as to what was behind the wall. It looked too defended for a normal industrial estate; the massive gates were labelled alphabetically. Could it be military or a prison?

After gate R came one labelled Gate House, then another labelled Manor House. Perhaps the last redoubt of some Russian oligarch on the run from Moscow.

Eventually all was revealed, well not quite, the 1909 hall ‘in tasteful neo-Tudor’ is behind the walls. It’s the public, as in private, school of Queen Ethelburgas. I tried to research said queen, but retreated from this as there are a number and some double as saints. One founded a “school for maidens” more than 1,000 years ago and another decamped to Rome to live an anonymous life of poverty, so it might not be her. We circled round, still by brick wall, and then, with some relief for the senses and the spirit, reached green hedges and ditches purple with Himalayan balsam and crossed half a dozen fields and that brought us back into Green Hammerton.


Directions

When in doubt look at the map. Check your position at each point. Keep straight on unless otherwise directed.

1. North along The Green (road) by village green, swings right, becomes track.

2. On left-hand bend, straight on to track (sign and Pool Spring Farm). Turns sharp left.

3. At farmyard, pair of fieldgates, 20 yards, track on right, pair of fieldgates, skirt garden, gate/fieldgate. Ignore track on left (waymark).

4. Gate/fieldgate to dead-end road (fingerpost). By high wall.

5. Left around corner and into village. Pass houses. Left at T-junction, verge.

6. Low stile on left (fingerpost Green Hammerton), path between hedge and brick wall.

7. Stile and footbridge on right (waymark on rail), angle 11 o’clock across field for 200 yards to squeezer a corner into next field and by hedge to your left (old waymarked post nearby), 200 yards, right at field corner, 100 yards.

8. Path on left (old waymark post), stile. Footbridge, stile (waymark), keep by trees to your right.

9. Concrete slabs at corner, cross fields towards barn and join track which passes to the right of the barns. Rejoin outward route.


Fact file

Distance: Four miles.

General location: Near York.

Start: Green Hammerton.

Right of way: Public.

Dogs: Legal.

Date walked: July 2010.

Road route: A59 from York.

Car parking: Roadside in village.

Lavatories: None.

Refreshments: Inns at Green Hammerton.

Tourist and public transport information: Wetherby TIC 01937 582151.

Map: Drawn from OS Explorer 289 Leeds, Harrogate.

Terrain: Flat.

Difficulty: Quite easy.

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

View a map of the Green Hammerton country walk>>