What is this life, if so full of care,
we have no time to stand and stare
Autumn
colours in Billy Bank woods, Richmond, Swaledale
Map: OS Explorer 304 Darlington & Richmond at 1:25000
Ordnance Survey route map on
the Landranger series map base
View the route in Google Earth
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This morning was quite foggy in the vale of York, but as we drove north up the A1 to Richmond we left the fog behind. We parked in the cobbled market square at about 10.30am in one of the very few remaining spaces. It's a very interesting little town with many historic buildings and of course the castle. We set off down the hill from the market square into Frenchgate and turned right onto the main road towards the river Swale. Just before we reached the bridge over the river and after we had passed the church, we turned left into a narrow street called Lombards Wynd (map ref.NZ 174010). At the end of this street we turned right on to a lane that follows the Swale towards Easby. There's a good view back up the river towards the town with its castle on the hill top.After about 400m we reached the drummer boy stone. Legend has it that there is a tunnel from Richmond town to Easby Abbey. A drummer boy was sent along the tunnel from the Richmond end whilst the listeners on the surface followed the sound of his drum. The stone marks the spot where the drumming stopped and the boy was never seen again. Well that's the story anyway.We continued along the track to Easby Abbey and spent a little while looking round the ruins. Then we continued along the track by the river for another 400m to the old railway bridge over the river (map ref. SE 184998). |
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The old railway bed is now a footpath and we followed the railway path for over 1km to the main road (A6136) at map ref. NZ 175009. Here we turned left along the main road for about 100m to turn right onto Priory Villas and took the path in front of the houses across the field to the road at map ref. NZ 170005. There's a good view of Richmond Castle across the river from the river bank. At the road we went straight across and followed the path climbing up through the woods. The autumn colours on the steep wooded bank were an amazing mixture of bright greens, gold and every shade of orange and copper. From the top of the woods we followed the path across the fields to Round Howe woods, a very pretty National Trust property. At map ref. NZ 154005, we turned right to follow a path down the steep valley side to a footbridge over the river at map ref. NZ 157008. We crossed the bridge to a car park, and clean public toilets where you could park (£2.50 all day) to start and finish the walk if there is nowhere to park in the town. From the car park we walked up the slope to the main road (A6108).
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At the road we turned left for about 100m and then turned right off the road on to a track for about 200m. Here we turned right onto another track called "Green Lane" on the map, and followed the track up the hill passed a small herd of belted Galloway cattle to a mettaled lane at map ref. NZ 153015. We turned right onto the lane and followed it for about 1.5km back into Richmond. Just as we reached the Reeth road in Richmond we spotted a plaque high up on the side of an end terrace house, that proclaimed this was on the centreline of totality during the total eclipse of the sun on 29 June 1927. There is a contemorary report of the eclipse on the BBC web site and a map (from NASA) of the area of totality showing the path of the shadow from Liverpool through Richmond to Darlington and out into the North Sea. We made our way back into the market square and found a very good fish & chip shop with a nice restaurant where we had a very enjoyable meal before setting off back home. The whole route took us about 3 hours and was almost 10km. |
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© 2008 Frank M Firth
Original
design by Andreas
Viklund
