Hackfall Woods from Grewelthorpe

Three miles and a little under two hours through a hundred and twenty acres of ancient woodland tumbling down a gorge above the River Ure, past the eighteenth-century follies, grotto and ruined banqueting house of a lost pleasure ground; the paths are steep, stepped and treacherous with wet leaves from October. Park in the small Woodland Trust car park at Hackfall on the Grewelthorpe to Masham road, three miles from Masham, and note that it holds perhaps a dozen cars. This is Woodland Trust land with no stock in it, so a dog can be off the lead for the whole circuit - a genuine rarity in this part of Yorkshire - and there is a shingle beach on the Ure at the bottom where dogs swim; the cautions are the drops, because several of the follies stand at the top of unfenced crags above the gorge and the riverside path has undercut banks where the Ure runs deep and fast.