THURSDAY, JULY 24, 2014 The Northern Echo 35 Walks what’son Walks Chop Gate and Barker’s Ridge

From this ridge, an old track leads down into Walk information Raisdale to reach Raisdale Mill, which is in the most idyllic setting amongst the hills. Distance: 8.8 km / 5.5 miles Time: 3 hours The walk 1. From Chop Gate car park, walk across the Maps: OS Explorer OL26 ‘North York Moors car park (away from the main entrance), over Western Area’ a bridge across Raisdale Beck just beyond Parking: Pay & Display car park at Chop the village hall along a track through a gate Gate (beside the Village Hall) just beyond the bridge. Follow the clear track Refreshments: The Buck Inn at Chop up, you’ll soon reach a stile beside a gate, Gate. after which continue up along the track for 25 metres then, as the track bends sharp Terrain: Moorland paths and tracks through right, bear off the track up to the right along gorse, bracken and heather, with a steep a sunken grassy path through the gorse/ ascent and long and quite steep descent. bracken (see a signpost). Follow the sunken Some road walking along country lanes. grassy path climbing quite steeply up the Overgrown paths in places. hillside through thick gorse/bracken for 175 How to get there: Chop Gate lies on the metres to reach a ‘fork’ in the path, with a B1257 between and . bridlegate across to your left just beyond a Please note: This walk involves a long small stream. Ignore the bridlegate but head and fairly steep climb up Trennet Bank onto up to the right along a grassy path through the heather moorland of Wether Hill. The bracken to soon emerge from the bracken moorland is exposed to the elements. Take beside two old stone gateposts (on their care walking along the roads – walk in single own). At the old gateposts, head to the left file along the verge and ensure you are up across the field along the old sunken visible to traffic. Map and compass essential. path (heading towards the ‘nose’ of Trennet Dogs on a lead across the heather moorland Bank) to reach a stile just to the left of a gate due to ground-nesting birds. in a fence. After this stile, continue climbing quite steeply up along a clear grassy path (still heading up along the sunken path) to Points of interest reach a stile across the fence to your left (see PICK a clear day and you will be rewarded waymarker), just as the ground steepens at with magnificent views, for Trennet Bank, Trennet Bank. Wether Hill and Barker’s Ridge offer to reach the next burial mound of Green reach a gate across your path (with a house through the gate. Then turn immediately unrivalled panoramas across the valleys of Howe, where you continue along the track just across to your right). Head through right back through another gate into the next , Raisdale and Scugdale as well as 2. Cross the stile and follow the grassy for a further 300metres to reach a T-junction the gate and follow the enclosed sunken field. After this second gate, head diagonally the Cleveland Hills. The heather is also just path straight on then, as the Bilsdale TV with another clear track across your path. track heading down (through a couple more down across the middle of the field to reach coming into bloom, which makes this the mast comes into view, follow the path gently Turn right along this stony track and follow gates) for 500metres to reach the buildings a bridge across a stream and through a gate perfect time to head up onto the hills. From curving right heading gradually up across it straight on along the right-hand side of of Raisdale Mill on your left, where you join just beyond. After the bridge and gate, head the car park at Chop Gate, our route follows Trennet Bank to reach a stile across a gate in the broad moorland ridge for 600metres a clear lane just after the buildings on your to the right keeping close to the wooded an old sunken track, known locally as a a stone wall. After this gate, follow the path (Raisdale falling away to your right) then left. Turn left along this lane, passing in front banks of the stream on your right and over a hollow-way, steeply up Trennet Bank onto the heading straight on, climbing quite steeply follow the track as it gently drops down and of Raisdale Mill and over a bridge across stile in a fence, after which carry straight on heather moorland of Wether Hill. Worn down up Trennet Bank through bracken, to soon bends slightly right to run along the top of Raisdale Beck then on passing between alongside the stream on your right across a into a deep sunken track through centuries of emerge out onto the flatter moorland on the slightly narrower Barker’s Ridge, that more buildings (what a lovely hamlet) follow couple more fields to rejoin the road beside use, this hollow-way was once used by alum top of the bank. Carry straight on alongside separates the head of Scugdale to your the lane bending sharp right, leaving the the stream. miners and their horse-drawn sleds on their the wall on your left to reach a corner of left and Raisdale to your right. Follow the buildings behind, up to reach a road. way up to the old workings along the edge the plantation. Continue along the narrow track straight on across Barker’s Ridge of Trennet Bank. The path begins to level (indistinct in places) path through the for 600metres to reach a gate across the 6. At the road, cross over the stile opposite out as we approach the prominent landmark heather, keeping close to the plantation track (with the line of Barker’s Crags ahead 5. Turn right along the road, down over a and follow the clear path straight on, of Cock Howe, a Bronze Age burial mound on your left, to soon join a clearer wider of you). Cross the stile beside the gate bridge across Raisdale Beck then rising keeping to the field-edge/stream on your surmounted by a cairn and standing stone. grassy path which you follow straight on and continue along the track for a further up (take care) to reach a road junction right, across fields back to reach the car climbing very gradually up across the heather 175metres to reach a staggered ‘crossroads’ (the entrance to Beak Hills and Cold Moor park and Village Hall at Chop Gate. moorland (leaving the plantation behind) to farms). Continue straight on along the road of tracks below a line of overhead cables. Mark Reid From Cock Howe, we follow a shooters’ reach the prominent landmark of Cock Howe for a further 400 metres to reach Westcote Turn right down along the clear track for Walking Weekends 2014 track across the rolling heather moorland of (an ancient burial mound with a standing 300metres to reach a gate across the track Farm beside the road on your right. Walk Wether Hilll, passing the prehistoric burial stone) at the top of the moorland (Wether (just to the left of the end of the plantation). past Westcote Farm and continue along the Peak District, Dales, mound of Green Howe. We soon join a Hill). Continue straight on passing Cock road for a further 375metres then, where Lake District & Snowdonia clearer stony track which runs along a high Howe to quickly reach a clear shooters’ track the road bends right at the entrance to Cock walkingweekenders.co.uk level ridge with the lush valley of Raisdale across your path. 4. DO NOT head through the gate but Flat Farm, cross the stile to the left beside down to your right before swinging round to pass to the left of it down a rough grassy the white gate and farm entrance. After the Unique corporate activity days, run across Barker’s Ridge, a fairly narrow bridleway with the fence/wall on your right. stile, walk across the field alongside the navigation skills and team building shoulder of moorland that hems in the upper 3. Turn right along this shooters’ track and Follow this wall down, over a gravel track fence on your left to reach a gate in the top experiences in the great outdoors. reaches of Scugdale with superb views down follow it straight on across the wide heather- then more steeply down to join an enclosed corner of the field (with a track coming down teamwalking.co.uk the entire length of this unfrequented valley. clad ridge of Wether Hill for 650metres grassy track which leads down to quickly from the farm buildings), where you head

Countrydiary By Phil GatesBBirdwatch y Ian Kerr

NE of the joys of wildlife watching tops of oak trees, EABIRD colonies are noisy and at Gateshead. is that it can deliver wonderful where the adults feed exciting places at this time as Other kittiwakes use waterside O surprises. One of the butterflies S on honeydew secreted chicks start fledging. Among them, buildings around the Tees and in that I’ve wanted to see ever since I started by aphids. There they kittiwakes always appear to be the gentlest Hartlepool and Seaham but the Tyne wildlife watching, half a century ago, is the can only be observed members of the gull family. But that’s an colony is unique in Britain for being so far purple hairstreak butterfly. Last week that through binoculars, as illusion which belies the toughness of inland. Adults have to commute to coastal wish was fulfilled. fast-flying butterflies these birds which, unlike most gulls, are waters to find food but must consider Purple hairstreaks have always been whose wings flash truly a maritime species. They spend eight the availability of those high nest sites rare here and in his 1986 guide to our purple then grey as months of the year feeding at sea, many an adequate compensation and probably region’s butterflies, the noted Chester-le- they open and close. wandering west across the north Atlantic little different from sea cliffs. Anyone who Street lepidopterist Tom Dunn described The exceptionally as far as Newfoundland, only returning to wants to see a real wildlife spectacular its existence here as being ‘so tenuous as well camouflaged land to breed, usually at traditional sea- could do no better than walk around the to be bordering on extinction’. So when I caterpillar feeds on cliff sites. quayside area — but do it soon as it will was out walking near Durham city with oak foliage and only This week I visited one colony where shortly be deserted again. descends to ground my colleague Allan Watson and he spotted chicks were busy testing their wings for Our smallest seabirds, storm petrels, level to pupate in the soil and sometimes in a small silvery grey butterfly in the grass their nervous first flights. The air was breed no nearer than northern and ants’ nests. The specimen that Allan spotted under an oak tree, it never occurred to me filled with the continuous echoing calls western Scotland. But some visit local on the ground must have just emerged from that it could be this elusive insect. That of adults, the begging of young and the waters in summer, keeping well offshore its pupal case and was about to makes its was confirmed when it opened its wings to ever-present rumble, not of the sea but of by day away from predatory gulls. At night reveal its breathtaking purple iridescence. way to the tree top. heavy traffic. Yes, I did say traffic because they can be lured by recordings into the These butterflies are hard to watch at It could be that, since Tom Dunn’s day, this colony of over 350 pairs occupies the nets of ringers. There have been catches close quarters even in parts of southern it has become better established here. towering ledges of the Tyne Bridge with this week at Whitburn, Filey, Burniston, where they are plentiful because Visit http://tinyurl.com/mdgtbfx for a hundreds of others on nearby quayside Marske and the Farne Islands where a they spend most of their lives high in the photograph of this lovely butterfly. buildings, including the Baltic arts centre much rarer Leach’s petrel was also caught.