THE NORTH YORK MOORS - A Northern Coast to Coast Walk: From St Bees to Robin Hood's Bay - page 113

From Fat Betty continue along the road for a short distance until a line of
boundary stones going left marks the line of a possible shortcut, saving
all of 100m. This shortcut, if taken, brings the route back to the road for
a minute or so, before another narrow but clear path darts off to the left
to reach a single-track road heading north across Danby High Moor. This
time the saving is about 300m. The shortcuts from the Margery Bradley stone offer
a minimal time saving, and you may prefer to stay with the road, which has the advant-
age of visiting Ralph Cross, and is safer in poor visibility.
Follow the road, left, up a slight rise, until a broad track branches right,
towards an old shooting hut, Trough House. A fine traverse of moorland
now ensues, the path soon meeting Trough Gill Beck, and then circling the
head of Great Fryup Dale across a landscape dominated by heather, brack-
en and bilberry, and passing an area where coal was once mined. This
enjoyable interlude across Glaisdale High Moor declines as the way meets
another of the unenclosed roads crisscrossing this part of the moors, this
one keeping to the high ground between Great Fryup Dale and Glaisdale.
Turn left along the road, heading north, and after about 1.5km (1 mile)
go right on a broad track just before the road reaches the conspicuous trig
point. The track that follows, along Glaisdale Rigg, is an ancient highway,
as many standing stones with directions on them testify, and leads easily
and most pleasantly down to the village, with the abundant heather (not
the last we will see) gradually giving way to grass as height is lost.
Finally reaching the village at the green, the onward route here turns
right, staying with the meandering road through this strung-out village
to the railway station, near Beggar's Bridge. With only short stretches of
heather moorland to come, the time spent in the wilderness of the North
York Moors can here be said to be at an end.
GLAISDALE
Glaisdale is a sprawling village built on a series of hillsides that in the mid-19th century
possessed a prosperous iron industry, which helped to establish nearby Middlesbrough
as a steel-producing town of considerable importance.
Arthur Mee described the nearby valley as, 'a dale shut off from the world by the
moors', while an earlier guide proclaimed, 'There is no air more vigorating, the spot has
many natural charms. It is among meandering streams and wooded vales, and around
for miles are the beautiful moors.' Not surprisingly, such an isolated community, one
that even today is awkward to get to, is a source of folklore and legend. Prevalent in
that folklore are many tales of hobs and goblins, and one such used to inhabit Hart
Hall Farm on the edge of the village. Usually hobs are depicted as solitary, dwarf-like