Cow & Horse Dale

1. As usual with our walks from Huggate, start in the car park just past the Wolds Inn. At the car park entrance take the foot path to your right, heading across farm land. There may be cows (and horses) here so keep your dog on a lead as you follow the path first to your left in front of an open barn, through a gate and down to another gate leading to a small non-through road in Huggate. 

2. Follow the road to the left into Huggate village, past the playground and turn right heading out of the village along, what turns into, the farm road. This takes you past the sewage works (don't turn left towards Glebe Farm - you will return via this route) and then climbs steadily up along the road heading toward Northfield Farm House. If your dog gets excited around sheep you may want to keep them on a lead for now as there are sheep in the field next to the road and this is the way you are heading.

3. At this first field you will spot a signpost on your right pointing to your route along the Chalkland Way. Go through the metal kissing gate here and head down into the valley. Even though this is Cow Dale there are often sheep here. 

4. Keep meandering along the valley bottom enjoying the quiet and the views until you can see another valley splitting off to your right and two way-markers on a post, one pointing straight on and another pointing left and down.

10. At the poetry bench take some time to have a light snack - Bill and I shared a banana - and just enjoy the tranquillity and loveliness of it all! Once you are finished walk back along the path behind the poetry bench the way you came but at the path you came down from the gate, carry straight on.

11. You can now just enjoy this stretch as it takes you all the way along the side of the dale. Keep a look out, though, across the other side in the fields for crop marks, which seem to mark out circular structures that once stood there. As this valley has a number of remains of prehistoric earthworks at this point, it may be that there was once a settlement here and these marks could be the evidence of roundhouses long since disappeared. I only saw these marks when I walked this route in February so you might not be so lucky in later months of the year.

The earthworks of Huggate Dykes on Huggate Pasture form part of a large series of prehistoric banks and ditches that can be found across East Yorkshire, stretching in total across 80-100 miles of the high ground of the Wolds although many have been ploughed away and are now only recorded as crop marks from aerial photography. 

The dating of earthworks is not easy, they may have their origins in the middle of the Bronze Age, although it is thought that their main construction and use phase was probably during the Iron Age - a single piece of early Iron-age pottery was found in a ditch during excavation of the site in the 1970's.