A Stroll With Stu: five-mile circular of Lealholm, near Whitby, which ends with trip to pub

The prospect of trying out the ‘under-new-management’ Board Inn, was purely coincidental.

Starting at the railway station head up the road away from the village, climbing steadily along an adjacent and slippery stone trod to reach a left bend.

Rake Lane, on the right, runs below the houses of Lealholmside which enjoy a stupendous view over middle Eskdale and beyond, and they might just mention it on any sales literature.

Follow the main road left, and 30 yards or so beyond Rake Lane a track leads off to the right which you should follow behind those houses, eventually leading you towards the corner of a stone wall where the path splits left and right.

Take the left option, with that wall and a smallholding now on your right.

I’m pleased to say that this whole route is well waymarked (and that isn’t always the case in North Yorkshire), so as you bear right at the next field boundary and continue in generally the same direction, look for a gate with that reassuring yellow arrow.

Exit that field through a similar gate in the diagonally opposite corner, then it is right and left to follow a clear path about a hundred yards or so above the line of trees in Stonegate Gill.

This field had had enough of the rain and was oozing up close to my laceholes, but had the cheery effect of giving my boots a good clean.

Emerge through a gate onto the road at Stonegate and take the road ahead signposted for Guisborough.

The Tarmac soon drops into a valley after a junction on your left and a very early flowering gorse bush, crossing Stonegate Beck on a bridge.

Climb up for a short distance, admiring the mauve and pink ID sprayed sheep suggesting that the farmer is a bit of a hippy and has happy memories of Woodstock in 1969, then go through a signposted gate on your left into a grassy field.

After a couple of gates, another signpost points you left, down to a steep drop to cross the beck on a footbridge, then haul yourself up again to head across a field to the group of cottages called Green Houses.

Many of these buildings are holiday lets grouped together as Fern Farm Holiday Cottages, and very nice they look too, though they probably look better in Spring and Summer rather than on this drizzly January afternoon. (Long walk to the pub mind)!

Follow the road around to the left to a signpost that points you onto open Moorland.

Now, those pesky sheep create their own paths in the heather, so make sure you keep going away from the road on your left, and let that wall curl away from you on your right.

Sometimes there is no obvious path to follow, so heather-surf onwards in the general direction of the highest point of the ridge on the horizon, about a mile away.

You should eventually come across the broad track that runs from the Lealholm road for three miles or so to Danby Beacon.

Depends where you emerge from the heather really, but a prominent signpost somewhere in your vicinity indicates a better track ahead to a standing stone and onwards and downwards on a vaguer track to a gate leading back to the road at Lealholmside, where you first deviated from the Tarmac.

Let gravity take its course and fall gratefully into the village.

Lealholm ‘settlement by the willow trees’ is described on Wiki as a honeypot.

On summer weekends, it is alive with families - kids splashing about in the shallow river – and there are lovely cafes, a cracking village shop, a popular garden centre, a scrumptious little bakery, stepping stones, a geocache trail and of course the Board Inn with its riverside seats and patio.

Winter is a struggle for these businesses so get there now if you can, but definitely put it in your diary for when the sun shines.

Under the ownership of Alistair and Karen (and indeed for some time before that, too), the Board Inn was for a long time my favourite pub in the Esk Valley.

A group of us stayed there many, many years ago and the mystery of the underpants on the pool table at breakfast time, has achieved legend status.

After a bit of a dip, the pub is now run by John and Adele and the place is welcoming and back on the rise – log fire, well kept ales, good food, nice décor.

Can’t wait to come back in summer.