Let's Walk the North York Moors Southern Area Guidebook

author: Stephen Robinson
This guidebook explores the southern area of the North York Moors National Park. The routes incorporate a tremendous variety of scenery including wild heather moorland, lush riverside meadows, and wooded valleys. The routes provide a superb introduction to the area's stunning landscape. This excellent guide provides superb full colour maps with numbered arrow pointers to identify the current position along the route. There are route directions with grid references beside each map to aid navigation, plus background information for each of the ten circular walks.

The southern area of the North York Moors National Park consists of a line of parallel but quite individual valleys, penetrating deep into the moorland watershed. These pastoral steep sided valleys extend eastwards along the perimeter of the National Park, overlooking the Vale of Pickering. Although the area has large-scale forestry plantations at Broxa, Cropton and Dalby, boundless expanses of heather moorland dominate elsewhere.

Probably the best known of these valleys is Farndale, which owes it fame to the multitude of wild daffodils which bloom in springtime. Across the treeless moorland plateau lies Rosedale, now a peaceful rural dale containing some of the best upland hay meadows in the North York Moors. Further east lies Newton Dale, where one of England's most scenic railway routes runs through a spectacular gorge, gouged out by glacial meltwater at the end of the last Ice Age. The valleys drain into the Vale of Pickering where they encounter another of the area's spectacular features - the Tabular Hills which mark the southern boundary of the National Park, impressing their unique qualities on the landscape.

The walk locations are:
Rudland Rigg and the Ingleby Incline - 8.25 miles
The Rosedale Ironstone Railway - 7.25 miles
Rosedale Abbey and Sheriff's Pit - 6.4 miles
Hutton Ridge and Spaunton Moor - 8.1 miles
Gillamoor and Douthwaite Dale - 6.25 miles
Appleton-le-Moors and the river Seven - 4.75 miles
The Hole of Horcum - 8.25 miles
The Bridestones and Stain Dale - 8.5 miles
Ellerburn and Howl Dale - 7.1 miles
Broxa Forest and Whisper Dales - 7 miles

ISBN 9781898550181 Pages 64 (2022) 144mm x 210mm