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Saturday walk: 5th July: Ripon Circular along the canal – c 7 miles, Easy
July 5, 2025 @ 9:30 am – 2:00 pm
The walk will start from the St Marygate car park in the centre of Ripon, at 9:30am. Pay for over 4 hours and take cash, as well as a card, just in case.
There are public toilets at the top of the car park, and we will all walk past them at the start of the walk.
After the toilet stop, we walk out by the side of the cathedral and on pavements down a couple of streets to reach the canal path. This is then a pleasant walk by the water, past locks, and a nature reserve. We cross the canal later on, by a lock and after walking a little way down the other side of the canal we then leave that path to go through some fields. We walk through a poultry farm and now that the bird flu restrictions have been lifted (again), we may be walking amongst freely roaming hens. We come out near some barn conversions and walk up the diverted path to reach Bishop Monkton. This is a lovely little village, but we don’t see much of it before we set off down a narrow path (which can be muddy if there has been rain) and into some more fields. We go through another poultry farm. I hope you all like chickens!
We come out on to a quiet tarmac road with a pavement and stay on that through the village of Littlethorpe before rejoining the canal and retracing our steps back to Ripon.
I’ve booked for lunch at The Chimes Tea room in Ripon. https://www.visitharrogate.co.uk/business-directory/chimes-cafe
Mark will be sending me the current menu when I advise him of the timings of the walk. I’ll send them out to those who sign up so we can do a pre-order for him.
If the walk takes under 3 hours, we’ll go back to the cars and change out of our boots.
As usual, we’ll encounter a variety of stiles and gates on this walk and livestock (mostly chickens) might be in the fields. If you have any concerns about slipping in any mud, I advise bringing a pole.
Please wear appropriate clothing and footwear, which take account of the weather forecast. I do my best to assess the weather and the likely walking conditions but would ask everyone to decide whether a particular walk is right for them on that day. Please note that everyone taking part in the walk does so at their own risk.
Here’s the OS Map App link.