A woodland walk around Kirkdale from St.Gregory’s Minster

Whilst on a short break on the Yorkshire Coast, my wife and I decided to take an afternoon hike and spotted a walk in the latest copy of the North York Moors Association newsletter which sounded interesting as it included a visit to St.Gregory’s Minster and was close to Kirkdale Cave.

I plotted it on my OS Maps app but changed some of the route I had read about, making it about a mile longer at a total of 5.5 miles.

We parked up at the car park at St.Gregory’s Minster which is just off the A170 close to Helmsley and Kirkby Moorside (there was an honesty box for payment which was fitting for a church!).

I have blogged about this historic church before which dates mainly to about the 1050’s, the period just before the Norman Conquest. You can read this blog here - https://www.realyorkshireblog.com/post/st-gregory-s-minster-and-its-unique-anglo-saxon-sundial

It is worth a look as it is a beautiful building and has an unusual Anglo Saxon sun dial – which was donated by the Scandinavian Lord Orm Gamalson who had converted to Christianity and paid for the church to be re-built having originally been sacked by Vikings.

The inscription beneath the sun dial reads - 'Orm Gamalson bought St Gregory's Minster when it was all ruined and collapsed and he caused it to be made anew from the ground for Christ and for St Gregory in the days of Edward the King and in the days of Tosti the Earl'.

After exploring the Church, we headed back to the road and turned left, crossing a ford and walking past an old footbridge. Immediately past the footbridge there is a footpath which leads off into a wood.

The wood follows the valley bottom and the path leads along the side of a dry valley where the river runs beneath ground under the limestone.

The path we took climbed up to above the treeline and met an area where tree felling had recently taken place on the valley side. The path here was lined either side with blackberry bushes bursting with ripe fruits and we stopped for 20 minutes collecting the blackberry’s to have with our breakfasts.

The path dropped back down into the valley, along treelined lanes until we came to a small settlement.

The settlement was called Hold Cauldron and a stream known as Hodge Beck ran alongside an old water powered mill, now in private ownership as a house.

There was a small bridge here but we stayed to the right of the building, ignoring a public footpath turning left through the field and continued on a bridleway.

The track rose gradually upwards and curved around through the woods until we met High Cauldron Road.

After walking through woods for an hour it was great to be out in the open and walking along the side of mature wheat fields for a while in the sun.

The path eventually took us between some more woodland and was quite muddy from some earlier rain. It was here that a huge Common toad caused us to jump as it hopped across our path.

This path took us to a cross roads which was signed to Fadmoor and was part of the Tabular Hills Walk.

The route then took us onto a beautiful tree lined lane known as Green Lane with fully grown trees evenly planted either side of the road, reminding me a bit of the Dark Hedges in Game of Thrones.

Through the gaps in the trees there were sheep grazing the stuble where wheat had been harvested, as well as huge square hay bales mounted like art installations in the nearby fields.

Coming to the end of Green Lane we walked along a quite road for half a mile until we found a path across through a field of potatoes. We followed the path until we reached a footpath sign through the woodland.

On entering Hag Wood we were met with the sound of tree felling. As the whole bank leading up the side of a steep slope was in the process of being felled. The chap doing the work turned off his engine and shouted for us to just head up the hill keeping as close as we could to the bearing of the footpath which could no longer be seen because of the debris.

It was quite a hard slog, climbing over stumps and walking over branches. On reaching a field at the top of the felled wood, we walked across to a narrow stretch of woodland known locally as Wattlemoor Slack. We hiked along this and out the other side till we reached Hag Road.

We turned left and down the road for a few hundred meters until we came to a footpath taking us through woodland again. This path followed the valley and ran parallel almost to the wood land we had started the walk along earlier in the day.

This was a beautiful path with trees forming a canopy over the path and then areas of sunlight shining through where a tree had fallen in the recent storms. The path followed the unusually named “Robin Hoods Howl” for about a mile before coming out in a field. Interestingly, the word Howl comes from the olde English word “holh” or “whollow’ roughly translating as hollow.

The field curved along a contour and we followed the fence a short distance to a crossroads. We took the road to Kirkdale eventually reaching the ford and footbridge we had started our walk at.

It was just before here that we ventured into the woods specifically to find Kirkdale Cave. This was the site of an amazing historical find of bones made in the 1820, which were identified as hyena, rhino, hippos and lion. The findings were examined by William Buckland and led to a giant leap forward in the theories of how climate had changed over the years.

You can read more about these extraordinary finds here - https://www.realyorkshireblog.com/post/a-hyena-den-in-north-yorkshire-the-secrets-of-kirkdale-cave

We walked back up to the car park at St.Gregory’s Minster and headed back to Staithes where we were staying.

This was a lovely walk along beautiful wooded dry valleys. There was enough gentle climbing to have felt that you had, had a work out by the end but apart from the walking up a slope over felled trees, nothing too troublesome.

The best map of the route we took on our walk can be found at - https://www.yorkshire.com/walking/walk-kirkdaleminster/?srsltid=AfmBOopFPDRw5I6qzrXJ7WXXq4EIomzHQ8L09MPf5w27QPwc9dwMDmbb

You can even download the GPX of the walk to upload into OS Maps if you have a subscription.

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