Clay Bank, Ingleby Incline, Botton Head North York Moors

Wednesday 11 May 2005
Clay Bank, Ingleby Incline, Botton Head circuit - 16km
North York Moors
Map: OS Explorer OL26 North York Moors Western area at 1:25000

Hasty Bank seen from Urra Moor

Looking out to Roseberry Topping from Greenhow Plantation	This morning I drove with three friends to the car park at the top of Clay Bank overlooking Teesside at map ref. NZ 572035. It was a perfect sunny day with a cool breeze, just right for walking. From the car park we walked along the road towards Chop Gate for about 100m to map ref. NZ 572034 where we turned into the woodland. We followed a forest track for over 3km around the top edge of the woodland to a shale cliff exposed by a large landslip at Botton Head, map ref. NZ 595020. From here we continued on the path through the trees until we emerged onto the stony track at the bottom of the forest slope at map ref. NZ 601026. This last 500m of the path was through a recently felled area and the pretty woodland path I remembered had gone and we had to pick our way through the tangle of branches left by the loggers.
About 200m further along we passed a large oak tree. The original trunk has long since gone but the shape of it can still be seen on the ground, about 3m in diameter. There are three new trunks growing splintered off from the original tree bowl and I believe the tree must be well over 500 years old. We continued on the track to the foot of the Ingleby Incline at map ref. NZ 600035. This was part of the old iron stone railway that transported iron ore from the workings in Rosedale and Farndale to the blast furnaces in Middlesborough in the 19th Century. We climbed up the 1.5km incline with its gradients of upto 1 in 5 and continued along the old railway track to map ref. NZ 608020. From here we followed the path across the moor to join the Cleveland Way route which we followed to the trig point at map ref. NZ 594015 above Botton Head.	Shale cliff face at Botton Head
Ancient oak tree - these two trunks are splinters from either side of the original trunk which became hollow and rotted away	This is the highest point on the North York Moors with great views down Bilsdale and over Teesside. From the trig point we walked along the Cleveland Way for about 100m before turning left to follow a track for about 1km to map ref. NZ 582014. From there we made our way along an old path to map ref. NZ 575018 on an ancient earthwork running round the edge of the moor. From the earthwork we took the bridleway down to the village of Urra. At the road in the village we turned right to follow the road to map ref. NZ 570020 where we turned right off the road to follow the path across the fields to the edge of some woods at map ref. NZ 572022. Here the path descends a steep bank into a lovely wooded little valley. At this time of year it is magical with the fresh greens of the new leaves, the lush grass and a wonderful variety of wild flowers, bluebells, violets, stichwort, celandines, primroses etc etc. ( you can probably tell that I quite liked it)
We walked through the valley to a lovely green track at map ref. NZ 571027, and here we turned right to follow the track up the hill to the road at map ref. NZ 573033. We walked along the road for about 200m back to the car park. The whole route had been about 14km and had taken us 5 hours including a couple of stops. *Right: the "Face Stone" on the Cleveland Way* Below: the "Hand Stone" on the Cleveland Way

Very pretty wooded valley near Urra	Very pretty wooded valley near Urra

Looking across to Ingleby Incline and Greenhow Bank from Greenhow Plantation
(the black dots show the line of Ingleby Incline)

Looking across to Botton Head and Greenhow Plantation from Ingleby Incline