A Stroll With Stu: take a springtime walk around Egton Grange, near Whitby

Bidding a warm ‘welcome back’ to my boots and rucksack, I started at Egton Bridge and finished at Glaisdale – though if you want to make it a circular five-miles, you can just head back down the road near the end.

Turn right from the railway station then right again after the church down Broom House Lane, admiring some impressively lofty Redwood trees in the gardens to your left.

As the road kinks right, head left between the buildings (a sign says ‘to the stepping stones’), to the riverbank.

On your right is evidence of old watermill paraphernalia and on your left are two sets of stepping stones crossing the River Esk.

Emerge triumphantly and hopefully dry, at the access road for the Horseshoe Inn, which you may want to visit on the way back if you choose not to head for Glaisdale.

Pass in front of the pub and down the road on the other side, soon over a footbridge adjacent to a ford and along the road past a pretty cottage.

Soon afterwards, where the road begins to climb up to the clouds, take a left turn along a track and follow it for almost two miles.

The path climbs slowly, revealing lovely views across the relatively shallow valley cut by Butter Beck as it winds down from the moors.

I like this little dale.

It isn’t as spectacular as its nearby cousins (Newtondale, Glaisdale, Fryupdale etc) but it is more wooded and is especially pretty when the anemones, daffodils and other wild flowers emerge from winter and the trees begin to spread their wings.

Pass by Hall Grange farm and its resident yapping dogs, onwards to eventually take a right turn down to Grange Head Farm.

A friendly horse popped its head over a gate, reminding me that for the 150th walk in succession, I’d failed to pop a carrot in my pocket for just such an encounter.

Follow the track in front of the farm, through a waymarked gate.

Now, I soon got a bit lost here (largely because a field boundary shown on my map no longer exists) and I splodged around much too far to the right in a field that was still being over-friendly with the water table.

Essentially, the path from Grange Head goes in a straight-ish line to Lodge Hill Farm, on the other side of the valley.

You need to head downhill to find a gap in the trees and a clearly visible footbridge over Butter Beck.

There has been some, er, landscaping in these parts (currently looks like a bomb’s hit it) with some new trees planted away to your right and old ones replaced with some spare mud.

It’ll look nicer soon!

After the footbridge, climb up to another soggy field and with quad bike tracks tempting you in all directions, go straight up the slope to the left hand side of Lodge Hill Farm.

I was here in 2012 and had a bit of a sense of humour bypass involving the lovely old lady who lived here.

She passed away a few years later and I went back to plant some daffodils in her memory (and by way of apology) down by the footbridge.

I was so busy down there berating my map, that I didn’t see them in bloom but I hope they survived or at least got washed downstream in a winter flood to blossom elsewhere.

Go through a gate to the left of the building, and pass in front of it (and then its accompanying derelict barns) to follow the re-laid access track.

Where it bends left through a gate, go straight on along a grassy track that soon reaches the sprawling Butter Park Farm.

Go straight on between various cattle sheds, then eventually past the farmhouse, to follow the wide track left and right to reach the road at a lovely thatched cottage.

Turn right, down steep hairpins and you will soon come to a signed track on your left into Arncliffe Woods that curls, twists and dips for a mile-and-a-half to reach Glaisdale.

These woods, which are slowly reclaiming some serious mining infrastructure, are alive with birdsong and the pungent smell of wild garlic at the moment and it’s a pleasant way to end this walk.

As is an hour or two in the Arncliffe Arms pub just 200 yards up the road from Glaisdale station.

As I said earlier, you can make this a circular walk by continuing past the entrance to Arncliffe woods and dropping downhill along the road to where you started in Egton Bridge.

Either way, it’s good to be back!