Michelle

West Burton – Redmire Force – West Witton – Templar Chapel – Waterfall – West Burton

Sunny and warm, breezy at times.

Michelle, Michael, Ron, Sandy, George.

Ken - injured knee

Ashley - injured knee

Bernie - family holiday

This was the first time that we have started a walk with a visit to the pub for tea and coffee – just so that we could all go to the loo. Our group photo on the village green was taken at the stocks which unfortunately were padlocked.

We inspected an ancient piece of farm equipment whose purpose we could not ascertain, before walking past a couple of follies which looked like kilns with rockets attached. Several buildings still had yellow bicycles and bunting after the Tour de France. We descended to the river where four of us crossed the stepping stones over a fast flowing section of river to give Michelle a photo opportunity, much to the amusement of a couple who were having lunch at the river’s edge.

Many of the bales of hay had been wrapped in white plastic and large Wensleydale Cheese Labels attached on the round ends.

There were superb views of Castle Bolton throughout the walk. Lunch was taken on some rocks overlooking Redmire Force. Michael lost control of his aluminium foil, which ended up in the river. We encountered an area of small rounded hillocks and humps, which may have resulted from the Ice Age. We climbed up to West Witton where we found that the first pub was a gourmet fish restaurant and we managed to miss the second one despite Michelle telling us where it was. Two police cars disturbed the calm by racing through with their sirens blaring.

We had good clear views of the North York Moors.

We took a look at the remains of a Knights Templar preceptory, which had been taken over by the Hospitallers about 1312 when the Knights Templar were suppressed. We took our second break beside this at a spot sheltered by a stone wall. Up until this point Michelle had been scoring highly but as we sat, a tractor came along and started spreading muck in an adjacent field. As a result we took a lower route than planned back to the impessive waterfall at West Burton. Finding our way across many of the fields later on proved difficult as many of the squeezes at the other end of the field (apart from being very narrow) were hard to locate. As a result we did not manage to conform to the request on notices asking people to walk in single file across meadowland

Wildlife:

Swallows (several sitting on a fence), pigeons, pheasants and chicks, wagtail, wren, gosander, mallards, geese, jays, partridge. A hen with 10 chicks who took them for a stroll among the sheep.

Rabbits, horses, ladybird, peacock butterflies, cabbage whites and a large Bernese mountain dog. Dead mouse.

The George of Piercebridge – nice meal. Had a look at the pleasant garden and island at the back. It was a pity that the muckspreaders were also out here, but we got used to the pong after a while.

 August Walkers in the stocks

What is it?

Folly

Tour de France relic

On the Stepping Stones

Giant Cheeses

Bolton Castle

Falls

River

Lunch

Sign

Adventurous family

AA box

Sandy crossing

Falls