North Yorkshire: Grouse watch Open-Beaked at Mark’s Bicycle Madness

After ten days at home following our Brecon trip, it was time to set off again. We decided to limit ourselves to two weeks so as to make sure we’d be back at home in good time for our second jabs (the appointments for which could arrive by letter any time). Finding camp sites that weren’t fully booked turned out to be a challenge. For the ease of being able to check the availability at different sites, line up an itinerary, and book it all online, we’ve stuck to Caravan & Motorhome Club main sites again.

Middleham Castle

Our first stop was the Lower Wensleydale Caravan & Motorhome Club Site (2 nights). It’s a very quirky site set in an old quarry with just one drawback – the camp site peacock. They may be beautiful birds but yikes, they’re noisy!

We didn’t let lack of sleep hold us back, and set off from the site to walk to the small town of Middleham, a 6.5 mile loop involving crossing the river Ure at one bridge on the way there and the next bridge down river on the way back.

The scenery in this area is lovely. A lady coming the other way up the path stopped to tell us that “if you ever want to see how to get your sheep in, don’t watch this guy” (bottom of photo)!

Middleham is twinned with Agincourt, which seemed fair enough, Agincourt having a battlefield and Middleham having a castle (the castle can be seen at the top left edge of Middleham in the photo above). The original wooden castle on the site was built around 1069 by the Norman knight Alan the Red (brother of Alan the Black…. I never could get my head around that one. They must’ve had very unimaginative parents). The stone castle was started in the 12th century with bits added over time in the usual way.

Middleham Castle’s main claim to fame, I guess, is that it was held by Richard III, England’s reputedly most evil king, from 1471 until he was laid to rest under a car park in Leicester in 1485.

Guisborough Priory

From Middleham, we took the main road around the northern side of the North York Moors, stopping to look at Guisborough Priory on the way. This was an Augustinian Priory, founded in 1189. It suffered in the usual way following the Dissolution of the Monasteries, so only the East End remains in any substantial form.

We could make out the outlines of the rest of the original structure, but there’s really not a lot left:

It’s a real shame that the rest is gone; it must have been very impressive in its day. Some of the “bits left over” in the adjoining gardens do look very attractive with a covering of moss. I wonder if they’d let us have a piece or two for the garden?

Whitby

Whitby! How often we’ve sat and drooled at the mere thought of fish and chips from the Magpie over the last year and a bit….. Finally, we made it!

Our base for three nights was the Caravan & Motorhome Club’s North York Moors site. From there it was a 7.5 mile bike ride down quiet lanes and then the “Cinder Track” (a walking / cycling path along an old railway bed that runs the 21 miles from Scarborough to Whitby). Hospitality was still outdoors / take-away only when we visited, so (the Magpie not having outdoor seating) we bought our fish and chips and hunted out a suitable bench… Aaaahhhhh, heaven!

We spent a happy couple of hours mooching round the town and visiting Whitby Abbey (another compulsory component of our trips to Whitby!) before starting the 7.5 mile cycle ride back to SOK.

The North York Moors camp site wasn’t really in the best location for us. Next time we’ll try to get onto one of the sites nearer the Cinder Track (even if it’s a bit further from Whitby).

One advantage of the North York Moors site, though, is that you can walk from it to the Falling Foss waterfall.

There’s a popular walk through the woods – only about 3 miles or so including the walk from the camp site, so by no means a major expedition:

Pickering Castle

We stopped off at Pickering on the drive from Whitby to Rosedale. Pickering’s a nice little town with a proper “motte and bailey” castle that’s just like the ones we all drew at primary school….

We did notice that since our last visit to Pickering, a new car park (on the approach road to, but run independently from, the North Yorks Moors Railway car park) has started offering overnight motorhome parking for £12. We parked there during the day for £5. Water is available and another motorhomer told us they’d been able to empty their loo (though whether this is an official facility or not, we’re not 100% sure). It’s a nice quiet location within just a few minutes’ walk of the town centre. One to bear in mind for future trips…….

Rosedale Abbey

Our final stop of the week was at the small village of Rosedale Abbey. From the name, the fact that it’s in Rosedale will come as no surprise, although there was never an abbey here. Rosedale was the home of a very small Cistercian nunnery founded in the 12th century. All that survives now is one tower in the grounds of the church:

It may have been the Dissolution of the Monasteries that closed the nunnery, but it was a nineteenth century “Klondyke-style iron rush” that saw the nunnery buildings sacrificed for building materials. After ironstone was discovered in Rosedale in the 1850s, the population increased fivefold as mining commenced on the west and then the east sides of the dale. Over the next thirty years, huge quantities of ironstone were mined and processed on site in huge kilns before being sent by rail to the blast furnace of County Durham and Teeside. By the late 1920s, all activity had ceased and Rosedale had reverted to being a quiet rural backwater.

We stayed at the Rosedale Abbey Caravan & Motorhome Club site for two nights, which was handily positioned opposite a nice-looking pub that could come in handy in more normal times. There’s a nice 11-mile walk that takes you from the camp site up the (steep!) side of the dale and then along the old moorland railway track bed around Rosedale (the red line on the map below, starting at Bank Top and keeping right at Blakey Junction).

We really liked this walk – you really can’t get lost and the scenery is great:

We saw plenty of wildlife, including lots of grouse on the moor on the west side of the dale (see featured image).

View from the end of the dale:

There are also, of course, the old industrial remains to look at. These are the kilns at Bank Top on the west side of the dale (there are more kilns on the east side):

The railway bed itself is an impressive piece of work. It was built by hand by navvies in a surprisingly short amount of time. The line along the eastern side of the dale in particular had some sizeable embankments (popular with rabbits – Mark was very impressed by the size of the warrens they’d dug) and a deep cutting:

Mark had a trick up his sleeve when we got back from the walk – he immediately rushed off to get his bike off the back of SOK….

At the start of the walk, we’d walked from Rosedale Abbey up a very steep lane called “Chimney Bank” (since at one time there was a chimney at the top) to Bank Top. I say walked, but as the steepest part apparently has a gradient of 1 in 3, climbed may be a better description! Anyway, as we went along, Mark informed me that this was a famous cycling climb, that it was the site of the National Hill Climb Championship in 1987, and that Chris Boardman came second by two tenths of a second.

Yes, this is the kind of detailed information to which Mark has devoted much of his grey matter. So of course he had to go pedal up it….

Mark seems to have interpreted the “cyclists please dismount” sign at the top as meaning that he should get off and take a photo of his bike propped against the sign before pedalling back down! Typical!

So there you have it – the first week of our short trip to North Yorkshire. More to follow…..