Walking in East Yorkshire - Beverley Minster and Westwood

This is a walk that you can make as long or short as you want.......

Beverley Minster

It starts at Beverley Minster, which is easy to find as it can be seen from, or is signposted to, all over the town. It's a very impressive building with loads of carved figures on it's exterior, and fabulous old doors. I love old doors for some reason. I think it's the sturdiness of them. They usually have massive bolts and hinges on them, and are usually really nicely carved too. The Minster is a proper old English church, and a fair size one too, bigger than you'd expect for a small market town like Beverley. It's surrounded by some lovely streets of mews houses and cottages, and the cows in the picture above are in a small field just across the road on one side of the minster. The field is on the road that'll take you to the Westwood. So with the cows in front of you, and the minster behind, turn right onto the B1230 Keldgate Road.

Follow Keldgate Road out of town (it briefly turns into Cartright Lane, where you'll pass The Royal Oak pub, which had a really nice looking pub garden) and you'll end up on Beverley Westwood which is a large pasture and common where a small herd of cows is allowed to roam freely. The road you are on, the B1230, takes you up the lefthand side of The Westwood. On the righthand side, further up this road is a golf course, with the clubhouse (with a black tower incorporated into it) on your left. If you carry on up this road you'll eventually reach a cattle grid at the top end of the golf course. You could choose to go across the back of the golf course which will take you to Newbald Road, a lane that cuts through roughly the centre of The Westwood on a parallel with the B1230 and will take you back into town. Or you could cross over to the A1035 which is on the righthand side of The Westwood and is where you can just about see the grandstand of Beverley Racecourse. That'll take you back into town too as Newbald Road joins it near the edge of town. Whichever way you choose, you can't really get lost because you can always see the town, with the Minster's twin towers in the distance, and you'll either go back the way you came, or into town the way I'll describe below.



View from Beverley Westwood looking back towards Beverley Minster and the Black Mill Tower





We decided to continue on the B1230 past the cattle grid and on until it turned into Walkington Road. As we passed a road called Megson Way on the left, about 100 yards further up on the right was a bridleway path that would eventually takes us onto Newbald Road. The bridlepath was full of hawthorn blossom when we walked it. When we reached the road, we turned right. This bit of Newbald Road is in woodland and is full of blind bends. There is no footpath, so it was a bit hairy if a car came round the bend the same time we were on it, but as soon as you get onto The Westwood again it all opens up, and we were only on the wooded bit of lane for about 5 minutes. As you go back through The Westwood you'll see the golf course again with it's greens all surrounded by low fences to keep the cattle off. There's also a lot of bumps and hollows which apparently are from when Beverley was famous for brick and tile making in the 15th century and the clay was extracted from The Westwood. Also in the centre of The Westwood is The Black Mill, a Grade II listed tower.

North Bar Gate Beverley

Following Newbald Road, you join the A1035 and come into town next to a picturesque row of Georgian terraced houses set back off the road on your right. Following the road down to the junction with the Rose and Crown pub (you'll pass a massive wooden signboard with the old rules and rights of the pasture on a brick wall near here), turn right and go through the North Bar, one of the old 15th century gates, into the town. We were in Beverley on Saturday, which meant market day.

If you've been following my garden updates, you'll know I'm after plants for my bee and butterfly border. Markets are great places for cheap plants. I picked up a small French Lavender and a fairly good sized Veronica 'Royal Candles'  for £2.50 for the pair. Very pleased with that. The Veronica looks a really nice shade of electric blue.

Beverley town centre has a nice range of shops including some independant boutiques with unusual homeware in them. We also popped into the antiques centre which is full of glass cabinets and rooms off of rooms of allsorts of things. I love a good root round in places like that. I'm a bit of a toot collector. My other half will definitely confirm that. If I can find him in amongst all the stuff I've got around the house. 

To get to Beverley we went by train so we came into town fairly close to the Minster to start with. As it was a Saturday it was very busy on the roads in town, and some roads get closed for the market. Another option would be to park up on Newbald Road in The Westwood (as seen below, mind you don't stand in a cow offering as they walk freely in amongst the cars) and walk into town from there on the route above. If you go straight through the main town centre shops and you'll come out at another smaller market square near the Minster at the other end. There are plenty things to see including a 600 year old Friary, which is now a youth hostel but is open to the public, which is close to the Minster too. All in all our Westwood walk took about an hour and a half so there's plenty of time to see and do other things in town.

Parking amongst the cows on Newbald Road in Beverley Westwood