The Seven Bridges walk

Most people walking up Cod Beck stop at Norby Weir, look at the water for a minute and turn round. If you carry straight on instead, a gate takes you into a short piece of woodland where the path crosses and recrosses a small stream on a run of little footbridges, then rises to come out on Stockton Road at the top end of town.

The whole wooded stretch is only two or three hundred metres. It is the sort of thing children remember and adults walk past, and it turns the weir from the end of a walk into the middle of one.

The stream is Whitelass Beck, and it joins Cod Beck about ninety metres below the weir, which is exactly why the path begins there. Both Visit Thirsk leaflets that cover this ground describe the section, though neither of them calls it the Seven Bridges. That name belongs to the people who live here.

From 87 Market Place, take Millgate down to the beck, which is two minutes on the flat. Turn north with the water on your left and follow it past The Holmes, where the playground and the picnic benches are, for another ten minutes or so. There are no decisions to make on the way: the path delivers you to Norby Weir, and you will hear it before you see it. The footbridge and the bench beside it mark the spot.

The path forks here, and this is where people turn back without meaning to. A sharp right takes you back towards town down the other side of the river, which is the loop most walkers do and the reason so few people know this path exists. For the Seven Bridges, carry straight on instead, and a gate takes you into the woodland. The first crossing announces the character of the place immediately: a concrete slab with one end settling into the stream, half broken and completely crossable, which is the Seven Bridges all over.

From that first slab the crossings come every thirty to fifty metres, so you are never long between bridges. When the path rises and joins a wider path opposite a bench put there by Thirsk Rotary Club, you have reached the far end. We timed it on the walk this page is written from: about fifteen minutes from the weir with constant stops for photographs, so nearer ten walked plainly.

Coming the other way, the entrance is off Stockton Road, which is the A61 running north towards South Kilvington. Look for a metal kissing gate set back behind the grass verge with a litter bin beside it, under a big sycamore; it is a gate rather than a gap in a hedge, which makes it findable from the road. There is no parking at that end worth using. Marage is the sensible car park, satnav YO7 1AA, and it puts you on the beck in a couple of minutes.

Walk it slowly, because the interest is all in the detail and it is over in a few hundred metres. The path meanders rather than runs straight, crossing the stream, then crossing back, with the bridges close enough together that you are on and off them constantly. With children the game writes itself: one of them owns the count, calls each bridge as it is crossed, and rules on the hard cases, because not every crossing is obvious and that is half the fun.

Count the bridges, and settle your rules before you start, because the answer depends on them. Do the concrete slabs count? The half-broken ones? The brick arch you cross without noticing there is water underneath? The footbridge at the weir itself? We walked it in August 2026 and made it six, maybe seven, and our best theory is that the weir crossing is meant to be one of the seven. Both published leaflets say only that the path crosses the stream several times, and the mapped record shows three footbridges on the right of way. Small footbridges go unmapped all the time, and nobody appears to have written the number down. If you get a firm count, tell us over a pot of tea.

At the far end you have three ways home, and the Rotary bench is the place to choose rather than drifting. The quickest is to turn towards town on the easy path beside Stockton Road: five minutes to the river bridge, off the road itself for most of it, some handsome houses to look at on the way, and it drops you back at the beck a couple of minutes from the Market Place. The prettiest is to turn round and go back through the woods, then come home down the other side of the beck, so you see every crossing twice without repeating a bank; allow another twenty to twenty five minutes. And the biggest is to carry on north to South Kilvington and come back on the field path past St Mary's, which turns an hour into a proper afternoon; expect field edges rather than made path, and take water on a warm day.

The bridges, obviously, and the fact that they come one after another rather than being spread out. That is what makes it work with children.

The shade, which matters in July when the beckside itself is open and hot. The leaflet's phrase for it is a shady woodland path, and that is accurate.

The link it makes. Without this path the Cod Beck walk is a there-and-back, and the country north of Thirsk stays behind a busy road. With it, the weir becomes a junction.

The water, if you stop and look at it. There are little fish plain to see in the pools, robins working the path edges, and frogs in these becks all year, with clouds of tadpoles in their season. By late summer the stream runs low and paddly, though even in a dry year it keeps going, and it fills back up through the autumn.

The quiet. It is minutes from the Market Place and feels properly secluded, which is a rarer combination than it sounds.

Match your footwear to the week's weather. In a dry spell most footwear is fine. After rain you want wellies, or boots you are happy to get properly mucky: it is a low woodland path beside a stream and it holds water for days.

Check the river before you set out in winter. Cod Beck comes off the moors and rises fast, and the flood warning areas here cover Shire Road and Springfield Close, which are right beside this path. The live gauge is linked above and takes ten seconds to read: if the Thirsk level is climbing, save this one for another day, because the whole path sits barely above the water even in summer.

Time it by what you want from it. Spring is tadpoles in the pools and the woods at their freshest. July is the shade, when the open beckside bakes and this stretch does not. After a dry August week it is at its most paddly and child-friendly. The hour to avoid is the one straight after heavy rain, for the mud rather than any danger, and the gauge settles that question before you leave the house.

There is one kissing gate at each end, and no stiles, so a dog that manages the Cod Beck stretch will manage this one too. A lead is sensible through the wooded part, where the path is single file and the drops to the water are close.

Giant hogweed grows along these becks along with Himalayan balsam. Hogweed sap burns skin in sunlight, so keep children from grabbing at the big umbrella-shaped plants, and do not strim anything.

If somebody in the party needs a firm surface, do not attempt this one. Take the asphalt cycle path along Stockton Road instead, which runs to South Kilvington and takes a pushchair without complaint.