Walk 593 Hovingham
Distance: Two miles.
General location: Howardian Hills.
Start: Hovingham.
Right of way: Public and permissive.
Map: Drawn from OS Explorer 300 Howardian Hills and Malton.
Dogs: Legal.
Date walked: August, 2008.
Road route: From York via Sheriff Hutton.
Car parking: Car park with honesty box or roadside in Hovingham.
Lavatories: None.
Refreshments: Two pubs, two cafés.
Tourist and public transport information: Helmsley TIC 01439 770173. Also www.howardianhills.org.uk and www.hovingham.co.uk.
Terrain: Nearly flat.
Points of interest: Hovingham Hall is open to the public sometimes. Walk booklets at Hovingham Stores.
Difficulty: Easy.
Please observe the Country Code and park sensibly. While every effort is made to provide accurate information, walkers set out at their own risk.
Please click the image below to go to the walking route sketch map and detailed directions, or scroll down to a Google Map of the route, the route description, and an image gallery. Plus you can bookmark this page on your favourite social bookmarking site, and comment on the walk. We hope you enjoy the walk.
Googlemap
Click on "Satellite" to see our route superimposed on the satellite photograph of the land. Use the tools to zoom in or out and or the "hand" to move across the map. The icon of two hikers is at the start of the route and when clicked shows its direction. The route line is approximate. To follow our directions please use our sketch maps (link above).
Google Earth is even more dynamic but if you don't already have it you will need to download a plugin for your browser first.
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HOVINGHAM was the perfect place for me. Viral feebleness provided an excuse for a lovely toddle around the Hovingham Estate in the Howardian Hills Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty. AONB for short, like the walk, and there was plenty of recuperation available at the cafés.
More than that we have a gastro walk, something for every stomach. You can tell from that last unappetising phrase that I don't do much food writing. I usually mis-time a pub, or am muddy and thankfully have long ceased to repeat the contents of my sandwiches.
The Hovingham Bakery and Tea Room was, after all of a quarter mile, our first rest, for sunshine by the ford, coffee, tea and wholesome teacake. Wasps were being eliminated by jam jars.
A pack of nicely ratty bikes burbled to a halt, including a Francis Barnett and a Dot. There was stuff on the go and mindful that the Worsleys, the baronets of Hovingham's motto ‘Virtus in Actione Consistit' chiselled nearby on the hall, we stirred and wandered off by the beck.
It takes but a few minutes to leave the village by the lovely limestone cottages and houses, and their gardens of flowers and veg. Annoyingly, a grant-funded children's playground lies out of bounds because it was built under trees now thought dicey.
That was soon behind because one walks on to a great space and then half crosses it by a wide, straight track. A sea of wheat was flat for miles with a lovely soft gold to it. A combine harvester was parked, presumably primed, behind a hedge.
A copse further out on the flats once held the spa. Beyond and to the horizons the land rises ever so gently to slopes with broadleaf woods.
Woods and medicinal waters were not for today, these are on respectively the Blue Route and the Purple Route, we were on the Green Route as in green at the gills. These fresh permissive routes can be found on the AONB website.
Ours took a gentle slope, and there is one small complaint of the one and only obligatory stile - if it were a gate, more people could do this walk.
By now Stonegrave was visible, a mile to the north, but that's nothing to the main view. Lounging on the balustraded bridge you look over pasture parkland that is threaded by a stream and then over a cricket pitch, in total a third of a mile to the west face of Hovingham Hall, which as dozens of windows and is eighteenth century.
A hundred cattle of many colours grazed the park. Visitors sliced cheese on a board on the bridge. Then we took a permissive path towards the hall.
Hovingham is all over pleasant and we came in by an old vicarage, box and lavender, and an estate yard. As a reward for the virtuous activity, there are more food and drink options. Namely, the Malt Shovel, the grand Worsley Arms, or the shop-cum-café called McConnell Thomas.
The latter was recently judged the ninth best deli in the country by a national newspaper, with sandwiches to tempt. But we were done and had their Victoria sponge and tea and chatted to a cyclist, while the roads were prettied by 2CVs at large from a Duncombe Park rally.
Image Gallery
Please click your mouse on any of the images to open the image lightbox.
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