WALKING THE SHEPHERDS ROUND

Monday 18/01/2010. This is my latest route in the North York Moors and I am slowly improving my knowlege of the geography of this least visited of our National Parks whose northern boundary lies a few miles south-east from my home in Ingleby Barwick. The Shepherd's Round, has like it's sister walk; The Hambleton Hobble been devised to take some of the pressure of the famous Lyke Wake Walk route from Osmotherley to the coast at Ravenscar. This latter route I have now walked three times with another partial completion a couple of years ago when I abandoned the route after losing a couple of hours searching for my tent! which had dropped off the top of my ruc-sac, teaching me an important lesson in the process. Like the Lyke Wake Walk my route starts in Osmotherley and being circular finishes there completing a loop starting north along the Cleveland Way to Bloworth Crossing then down Rudland Rigg, across the valleys of Brandsdale and Bilsdale to Fangdale Beck and then Hawnby and back to Osmotherley via Arden House and the ancient drove road over the Black Hambleton. This is given as 36 miles in length and my GPS recorded 37.2m so I managed to keep pretty much on route despite some difficult walking conditions caused by the surfiet of frozen snow beneath my feet and low cloud levels above my head, limiting visibility.

As usual I travelled to Osmotherley by bus via Middlesbrough and Stokesley and started my walk at 11.30am exactly. As I had not previously visited Lady Chapel half-a-mile out of Osmotherley, I took the short detour to have a look at it, worth the effort. From the chapel I made my way over Beacon Hill to Scarth Nick Wood then the up and down rollercoaster of the Cleveland escarpement taking in Live Moor and Carlton Bank, (coffee break at the Lord Stones Cafe). From the cafe I took the low route passing The Wainstones through Broughton Woods and camped for the night where the track comes down from The Wainstones to meet the road at Hasty Bank. It was a cold night with termperatures dropping well below freezing point, but I slept well and had the company of podcasts of some of my favourite Radio 4 programmes to listen to on my MP3 player, having just mastered the process of podcasts it was good to have this in-tent entertainment during the the long hours - I camped at 5pm, till Tuesday morning's start at 8.30am. My MP3 radio also picked up a clear signal but my mobile phone could not so I was unable to ring Joy. It's a bit counter-intuitive, ten miles from home and I get no phone signal on my local hills but can ring home from Lake District summit. And so to sleep with the first ten miles completed.