Osmotherley

Stone, Faith and the Moorland Edge

At West End a slab of ashlar stone sits about eighteen inches off the ground on five tapered legs. It is the barter table, sixteenth-century, where market traders once laid out goods and coffin carriers rested their load. John Wesley preached outdoors near it. He came to Osmotherley eighteen times, first in 1745 at a Franciscan friar's invitation, and eventually into a Methodist chapel three brothers had built in their own backyard in 1754 — later a schoolroom, since restored.

That is the register of the place: a market cross, cobbles and stone flags, grass verges, and narrow snickets threading between sandstone houses. The village sits at about 200 metres on the western edge of the North York Moors, where Cod Beck cuts down through wooded scarp, with the Yorkshire Dales visible across the far side.

Three Inns and Village Food

Three pubs still trade, all of them marked on mid-nineteenth-century Ordnance Survey mapping. The Golden Lion pours Timothy Taylor Landlord as its regular cask, with Rudgate, Helmsley and Wold Top ales passing through, and the kitchen's dishes have run from a Scotch egg and kebabs to hake fillet, beef Wellington and sea bass, finishing on cheesecake or bread-and-butter pudding. Drinkers are welcome despite the kitchen, and the outside tables have a view. The Queen Catherine is a single long room split by its central bar into lounge and dining ends, with Theakston Best Bitter, a real fire and rooms upstairs; it shares owners with the Three Tuns down the way, a seventeenth-century stone building given over mostly to eating, its front bar panelled in wood and fitted with Rennie Mackintosh-style ironwork.

Top Shop stocks fresh Danby Bakery bread, Yorkshire honey and Brymor ice cream. There is also a tea and coffee shop, while the Mill Kitchen at Cote Ghyll offers breakfast baps and pizza evenings.

Walking from the Market Cross

The walking is the reason many people come. From the market cross a 3.25-mile circuit drops through fields and woodland to Mount Grace Priory — England's best-preserved Carthusian monastery, where the monks lived mostly alone in individual cells and gardens, and where stoats now run the passages beneath the ruins — before climbing back on the Cleveland Way. The Cleveland Way passes through here, the Coast to Coast passes through here, and the forty-mile Lyke Wake Walk starts here. For something flatter, the circuit around Cod Beck Reservoir is level and step-free, good for dogs and picnics, though the water is too cold and deep for swimming.

Arriving via Northallerton

Northallerton, about six miles west, is the nearest rail station. Bus routes 80 and 89 link it with Osmotherley, and road access is via the A19.

The Spring Toad Crossing

Each spring, thousands of toads head for the reservoir, with volunteer patrols helping them across the road.