Chasing an Elusive Horse at Sutton Bank

Sutton Bank is a 300 metre high hill near Thirsk in North Yorkshire. A quick Google search will tell you that a lot of people consider the view from its top to be one of the finest in England. Reason enough to go for a hike in the area but we had another quest. John had promised me a horse carved into the side of the hill, which we would pass at the end of the walk: Kilburn White Horse. Promises of giant ponies I can take photos of are a good motivation to get me climbing up and down hills.

We started at the Sutton Bank National Park Visitor Centre, which is on top of the hill, and then headed north along the bank. It was still early in the morning and the sun hadn’t had a chance to warm up the air yet. Not that I think it would have mattered much because I don’t believe it is ever warm up there as the wind is soaring over the bank like there is no tomorrow. We were in luck that the wind blew from the west because that meant it pushed us further onto the plateau rather than off the rather steep cliff to our left. Some sort of hat was in order! But it was definitely worth it, the view over green and orange hills and Gormire Lake was spectacular.

As soon as you go down the hill and wander into the villages at the foot of Sutton Bank the wind stops and for a November day, it was actually quite warm. The downside to being in a valley in late autumn is the wetness. Every field we had to cross was waterlogged. This is not a place you want to be in while wearing puny shoes. I recently invested in some new hiking boots after my old ones started having the waterproof properties of a desert sandal. This walk certainly put the new boots to the test. Naturally, you’ll try and find the dryest way to cross a puddle but if the puddle is an entire field it can get a bit tricky. At one point, we clambered along the very edge of a field by a farm, clinging onto a barbed wire fence for dear life so that we might not fall into the knee-deep mud. It wasn’t made any easier by having spectators. Some interested cows stopped their peaceful grazing to stare at us probably wondering what those crazy humans were doing. My feet were fully submerged at times but there just was no other way across. I was rather proud of them afterwards. Though many muddy kilos heavier than before, my feet stayed dry and snug. That’ll do, boots. That’ll do.

Around midday, the sky started filling up with gliders as the Yorkshire Gliding Club is at the top of Sutton Bank. Gliders are pulled up into the sky either by tractor or by plane for higher altitude. Conditions must have been amazing for gliding on that day because there were at least ten gliders in the air at any time we looked up. When you stood on a hill, the gliders were so close that you could see every detail before they veered to the valley again. Apparently, Amy Johnson was one of the most famous members! If you ever visit Hull, odds are that you will come across all the names Hull is most proud to be associated with: William Wilberforce (slavery abolitionist), Mick Ronson (David Bowie’s guitarist, born in Hull), Philip Larkin (poet) and Amy Johnson. Johnson was an aviation pioneer and the first woman to fly solo from Britain to Australia. She died in a flying accident over the Thames estuary at the age of 37 in 1941 and there is still some ambiguity surrounding her death as the purpose of her final flight is a government secret. WW2 was on after all... All rather mysterious but I digress!

We were walking along fields full of livestock, cows, sheep, horses until we came to a field full of... sheep-cows? From a distance they looked like your bog-standard sheep but as you got closer their faces looked like those of young cows, and they were somehow broader than your average sheep. As we approached them, the creatures started getting uneasy, got up and all limped off. One of them exposed a strange growth on its side as it waddled up the hill. All I could think about was them being a failed attempt at crossing cows and sheep to get the best of both worlds like the potato-tomato plant that is tomato at the top and potato at the bottom - the TomTato. I don’t know what government experiment had gone wrong in this field but something wasn’t right.

I felt quite sorry for them and the feeling that something was wrong got stronger when I saw the flawless sheep one field over. What they had in looks they lacked in manners, though. One walked after us until I stopped to take a photo of it. As I was about to push the button to capture this photogenic being it started relieving itselfs while staring right at the camera with a look of ”Hmm… yeah, you like what you see?” and then walked off to join the popular crowd again. So maybe being a genetic mutant sheep and having nice genetic mutant sheep friends does have its perks. But if somebody knows if cow-head sheep are a certain breed or if it’s a common condition among sheep then please let me know and put my mind at ease!

After a lot of field walking we entered some woods and walked around Gormire Lake, which we could see from the top of Sutton Bank earlier. With the cliffs of Sutton Bank in the background, it felt like we were somewhere in North America and no longer in Yorkshire. It was beautiful and we came across some interesting trees and decided to rest on a birch to have some coffee and gather strength before the final push. The last bit of the walk would include climbing back up Sutton Bank but not before walking through the village with the longest place name in England (Sutton-under-Whitestonecliffe) and past the White Horse of Kilburn, which had managed to stay rather elusive thus far.

Kilburn horse and a fleeing John

Especially since the Kilburn White Horse is the largest (and most northern) hill figure in England, I expected to see it from miles away. Well, how right I’d be. Carved into the side of Sutton Bank in 1857, it gets its distinctive white colour from limestone chips that it is covered with. As we approached the horse’s location on the map a huge frown started to form on my forehead. We found the horse alright. From the car park at the bottom of the hill you could see its behind and something that could be its legs if you used your imagination. From the top of the hill you could see its back. I never got to see the horse’s front legs or its head for that matter! It must have looked pretty cool from a glider or from a far away hill but we were too close to it, so it just looked like a patch of gravel. It was not all bad though as my resentment fuelled me until we got back up to the top of the hill and back to the car.