Baysdale

I followed a landrover track to the viewpoint on Ingleby Bank. A well built cairn provided a nice foreground to my photo of the surrounding hills and valleys. Further gradual ascent brought me on to the top of the hill and on to the Cleveland Way. This was another wide track and I started walking northwards along it. After a while I was disturbed by the sound of a machine behind me. I could see some trail bikes approaching and so I stepped off the track into the heather. It was a good job I did since they didn't slow down. I counted twelve of them altogether. So much for a quiet day out. 

A few minutes after they'd disappeared, I was surprised to reach a tarmac road. This descended down into the valley to my right. My map indicated that this was Baysdale. I'd not intended to go down into Baysdale, but it looked so picturesque I decided to wander down and check it out. This appeared to be the only access road to Baydsdale and it felt very secluded. My map said that there had been an abbey in the valley bottom. Later research indicated that it had been a 12th century Cistercian nunnery. A medieval ribbed bridge leads to a farm and a few terraced cottages. It is a delightful setting, but it must feel quite isolated when that steep access road gets iced up. I followed the valley down for a short way and then headed off uphill into the woods, on the other side of the valley. 

Baysdale Moor

There then followed a couple of hours of walking along a landrover track across Baysdale Moor. There was a wonderful feeling of remoteness as I walked across the top of the moor. The landscape is so vast, and is so featureless, that it instilled in me the feeling that time had stood still, and I wasn't progressing at all. If I looked eastwards through my camera's zoom lens, I could just make out the beacon on Beacon Hill (see Tweed Trouser Trouble). I didn't meet any walkers, but three groups of cyclists past me during those two hours. The track crossed the head of the Baystone valley and then doubled back towards the Cleveland Way. 

The Incline

Back on the Cleveland Way, I headed off southwards into a strong headwind. As I struggled forward I became aware that something was behind me. I turned around and was surprised to find a 4WD and two others following close behind. The wind was so strong I'd not heard the engine. I stepped off the path and let them pass. I made a diversion from the Cleveland Way to an area known as Incline Top. Ironstone used to be quarried in Rosedale and then transported over the moors to Incline Top. It was then transported down to the valley bottom on a cable, rail and wagon system, where it could then be taken to the foundries via the main railway system. The information board showed photos of the frequent accidents. If the cable snapped, the wagons could reach 113 mph when they reached the valley bottom. That seemed quite a specific figure and I wondered how they measured it. Unsurprisingly, the workers weren't allowed to ride the wagons up and down the hill. The remnants of the trackway and buildings can still be seen. Conditions used to be so harsh up on the top of the hill that the residents used to call it Siberia. Despite that, when the last Ironstone was quarried in 1929, the workers didn't want to leave. A rather surreal picnic table has been setup on the site with a scale model of what the area looked like in its heyday. 

Round Hill

I followed a cutting from Incline Top and then turned right on to another wide track up to Urra Moor. Round Hill is the highest point of Urra Moor and is also the highest in the North Yorkshire moors. Urra is a mixture of Old English and Old Norse (horh and haugr) and means the Dirty Hill. I'm not sure why it deserves a name like that, since it is no more boggy than other nearby moors. The surrounding area is noted for its prehistoric remains. There are a number of barrows and also some carved rocks. The most famous is the Face Stone, so named for obvious reasons. I started heading down to the car park on some knee jarring stone steps. The world suddenly became more populated. The car park was now full and the view across to Roseberry Topping was just as pretty as it was this morning. 

This was a long walk, but it was so good underfoot you could have completed most of it in a landrover. I'd forgotten about the tremendous bleakness and remoteness of the North Yorkshire moors. This walk provided a good reminder of those attributes.