The lane into Littlebeck drops steeply off the moor, the last stretch on minor lanes into the valley bottom. It ends near a ford across Little Beck, a minor tributary of the Esk, where a handful of sandstone cottages stand a storey and a half tall under red clay pantiles. Hawthorn hedges and dry-stone walls hold the valley sides. One house breaks the pattern: Bracken Hill, with Gothic Revival bargeboards, finials and roof tiles patterned in red and black, as though someone had strong feelings about the alternative.
You come down here for the walking. The hamlet sits inside Little Beck Wood, a 26-hectare reserve of oak, ash, alder and cherry that the Yorkshire Wildlife Trust has held since 1970 and owned since 1986. In spring the ground fills with bluebells, wood anemones, primroses and early purple orchids; dippers and grey wagtails work the stream, nuthatches and treecreepers the trunks. The Coast to Coast path runs through the wood on its way to Robin Hood's Bay, and you may pass the occasional walker following it across the country.
The obvious circuit is the one to Falling Foss, a thirty-foot waterfall about a mile along the river. A 3.4-mile loop from the village links the fall, the wood, open views over Eskdale and around 210 metres of climbing; a longer 4.3-mile version starts from the May Beck car park. Both pass the Hermitage, a small room hollowed out of a single sandstone boulder and dated 1790 by an inscription above the entrance.
At Midge Hall, beside the falls, the Falling Foss Tea Garden puts picnic tables among the trees rather than tables under a roof. It runs seasonally and outdoors: scones with jam and cream, homemade cakes, barista coffee, speciality teas and locally made dairy ice cream, eaten within earshot of the water. The present owners found Midge Hall derelict in 2006, more than fifty years empty and without mains power, sewage or a telephone, and finished buying it in 2008. "There is something about Falling Foss that gets into your heart," they wrote of the restoration, "and once it's there it's there forever."
The village has no pub and no shop to speak of, which is worth knowing before you set out. Park at the village hall for a suggested donation and walk down; the riverside paths are steep, uneven and often muddy, and no good for pushchairs or wheelchairs.
The history here is industrial as much as pastoral. The Littlebeck alum works operated on and off from about 1660 until 1809, one of the earliest inland alum quarries in the country. Making alum meant firing heaps of shale for as long as nine months, leaching them, boiling the liquor and setting the crystals with an alkali got from burnt kelp or urine. What survives is an alum house, steeping pits, trackways and spoil heaps under the trees.
Inside the Methodist church, completed in 1890, the woodwork is the work of Thomas Whittaker, the Littlebeck carver known as the Gnomeman, and includes a carved Last Supper. Sleights, down the valley with the nearest railway station on the Whitby line and buses on to Whitby and Grosmont, has the shops. Littlebeck keeps the water, the wood and the quiet.