SLEEPY Hutton-le-Hole comes to life at 10 o'clock in the morning when the cafs, shops and Folk Museum open their doors for custom.

It is a busy place as tourists come and go enjoying the delights of this pretty village on the moor.

It is a very different village compared to thousands of years ago when the first settlers arrived during the Stone Age. Many other tribes and races settled here, leaving evidence of their existence for us to find today.

Tumuli and Howes are perhaps the most prominent and not far from Hutton-le-Hole at the top of Rosedale Chimney Bank is three Howes, probably the burial place of some long gone chieftain.

The Romans came and went and the Saxons arrived with their village communities, open fields and strip cultivation methods.

After monasteries, sheep farming, the Black Death and Henry VIII, the village outskirts were host to foreign glassmakers, who also visited Rosedale with their skills in glass blowing and furnace building.

Spinners, weavers, tanners and millers all played their part in the expansion and development of the village and in the 19th century, when the Rosedale mines commenced, many miners lived in Hutton-le-Hole and much drinking and fighting must have taken place. Give me today's sleepy village anytime!

The facts

Distance: 6 miles (10km).

Time: Three hours.

Start/parking: Hutton-le-Hole, park in the village car park, grid ref 705904.

Best map: OS Outdoor Leisure 27.

Refreshments: Pub and good caf in Hutton-le-Hole. Pub in Appleton-le-Moors which is slightly off route.

Public toilets: Hutton-le-Hole car park.

Guide book: Short Walks around Yorkshire's Coast & Countryside by J Brian Beadle, published by Trailblazer at £1.95 contains routes in the same area. Available from the Forge Team shop and Ryedale Folk Museum at Hutton-le-Hole, book shops, Dalby Forest Visitor Centre and tourist information centres.

Your route

Leave the village car park past the toilets towards the village. Bear left at the T-junction and walk downhill through the village. Almost out of the village, cross a stream, then turn immediately left at the public footpath sign.

Continue through a gate and soon bear right at the yellow waymark to start a climb past the trees and over a rough stony path. Climbing more steeply now, bearing right, then sharp left at the yellow waymark for an even steeper climb to a gate. Through the gate, bear slightly right to a waymark, then join a wide track going left and still climbing. Almost at the top, bear left, then right as signed.

Continue following signs to eventually reach a farm. Follow the signs and waymarks through the farmyard to the road. Turn right onto the road, then left through the village of Spaunton.

Soon you reach a junction, you must go right here signed to Appleton-le-Moors, but before you do why not visit Victoria Cross by turning left across the grass. It is only about 200 paces to the cross and is a grand viewpoint, looking across Lastingham village to the moors. Return to this point, then continue along the road to Appleton-le-Moors. As you approach the village, but still some way off, look in the hedge on your right to see High Cross, not very inspiring as a cross.

When you reach the village at the junction, Low Cross is on your left, an even worse example! However, keep walking for a few more paces and go right opposite the church onto the bridleway. If you would like refreshment go further into the village, the pub is on your right.

Continue along this rural bridleway to reach a crossroad of paths. Go right here through the gate onto another bridleway across the middle of a field.

It is a long steady pull here, but eventually you reach the top. Go left and soon you will arrive at a field gate. Through the gate continue straight ahead keeping to the right and you will soon enter a wood on the right through a gate.

Walk along the path on the edge of the wood and soon turn left, the path leaves the wood and climbs along the wide bridleway to a 'T'. Go right here onto a wide farm road, the farm road goes left soon, but you must keep straight ahead for some way yet. Eventually the path goes left then soon narrows and descends to the road through a gate. Go right at the road to return to Hutton-le-Hole village and that well earned refreshment.

Updated: 15:16 Wednesday, February 08, 2006