It’s the only other day over Christmas when it wasn’t raining torrentially, so we set out with my Dad for a circuit of the Hole of Horcum. It was, he assured us, not too muddy anymore, especially since a boardwalk had been built for the worst section.

We headed anti-clockwise around the top edge of the Hole of Horcum, alongside an iron age dyke (Gallows Dyke I think) believed to mark a territorial boundary. There’s a real sense of history walking around this area of moors and I tried (mostly unsuccessfully) to picture how this land had looked at various points in the history we encountered from Iron Age pastoral to being grazed by livestock from Malton Priory.

We then descend alongside Dundale Griff, a narrow, steep sided valley running into the Hole. It’s unclear how these ‘griffs’ were formed, but it’s very steep and I wouldn’t want to fall in! At the bottom we encounter the mud, and contrary to expectations there’s quite a lot of it. A few more hundred meters of boardwalk would be helpful, especially as Helen’s boots are light on grip. Between us however we manage to make our way through the worst of it without too much in the way of calamity and out into the flat bottom of the Hole.

In the final stretch we walk through the bottom of the hole. It was created by a process known as spring sapping where the ground water gradually undermines the slopes. It’s very evident as we’re walking through, as we see the repeated folds of land, where each of the springs flowed. The sun is starting to set and peering out from behind a cloud it makes for a spectacular light-show, as does the low light illuminating across the bowl. Finally we climb up out of the side and back to where we started.

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