The South Kilvington field path

There is a strip of countryside between the back of Thirsk and South Kilvington that almost nobody outside the town walks, because it has no name, no signpost worth the description and no entry on any walking website. It runs roughly parallel to the A19, behind the hedge, on field edges and old farm lanes, for about one and three quarter miles.

The lack of a name is real rather than an oversight on our part. The council's rights of way map records 86 paths in this corridor and every one is a number. There is no route relation for it on the open mapping, no leaflet devoted to it and no waymarked trail. The only names out here are the lanes themselves: Stoneybrough, South Dowber, North Dowber, and Stoneybrough has been on Ordnance Survey maps since the 1880s.

What it gives you is a proper piece of farmland walking that starts at the back of a housing estate. Ten minutes from the market square you are on a field edge with a hedge between you and everything.

There are three ways in and it is worth picking deliberately, because they are a long way apart.

The easiest from town is behind the St Mary's estate. Walk out north-east and pick up the path where it leaves St Mary's Walk. From our door that is about fifteen minutes.

The southern end is where the A19 meets the A170 Sutton Bank road, at the far edge of Thirsk. Ted's Walk 5 enters here from Whitestone Court off Sutton Road, and this is the end to use if you want the leaflet's three-mile circular.

The northern end comes out at Upsall Road in South Kilvington, by the village. Ted's Walk 1 uses this end and describes following the field edge south, parallel to the bypass, for about a kilometre.

There is no dedicated parking at any of the three. Use the town car parks and walk out.

Walk it in one direction and come back another way, because there and back on the same field edge is the least interesting version of this. Ted's Walk 5 is the ready-made answer: three miles, an hour and a half to two hours, one kissing gate and no stiles, and it takes in this path, the woodland by the beck and the weir in a single circuit.

The southern half is the pleasant surprise. The leaflet calls it a shady woodland path and notes that it feels peaceful despite the traffic behind the hedgerow, and that is exactly right. Paths come in from the housing on the left as you go, which is the St Mary's estate, then the houses end and open country starts.

Where the path becomes a concrete lane and bends left into Stoneybrough Lane, there is a short diversion worth taking: up the farm lane to where it crosses the A19 on a bridge, with the Hambleton escarpment in the distance.

It is quiet, and the reason is structural rather than romantic. No car park, no signpost, no listing on any walking site, and a name nobody can search for. The people on it live here.

The bridleway sections are open to horses and bikes as well as walkers, which is unusual for field paths this close to a town and makes it useful to more people than a footpath would be.

The three access points mean you can make it whatever length you want. Behind the estate to the Sutton Bank road and back is under an hour. All the way to South Kilvington is an afternoon.

Take OS Explorer 302 or at least know that your phone may let you down. One of the footpaths in this corridor is not on the open mapping at all and another is mapped without any status attached, so an app-only walker can find themselves at a field edge with nothing on the screen.

Boots from November to March, without question. These are field edges on flat ground near a beck and they hold water.

There is livestock on parts of it, so dogs on leads where you cannot see over the hedge.

Two things to watch on the maps and the signs. The A19 here is the bypass on the east side of town, not the road through it, and not Stockton Road. And the St Mary's estate contains streets called Herriot Way and White Rose Way, neither of which has anything to do with the long-distance Herriot Way in the Dales, which is fifty miles off and nowhere near.

If you want the same two ends with a firm surface under a pushchair or a wheelchair, take the asphalt shared-use path along Stockton Road instead. It is part of National Cycle Network route 657 and runs between Thirsk and South Kilvington without a stile in sight.