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Mount Grace Priory -  a short walk from Osmotherly

For years I avoided going to Mount Grace Priory. It was just another dot on the map, just another ruined abbey where you can look at the remains of the cloisters and die of boredom. Yet I was wrong. Mount Grace is probably the second best monastic ruin in the North after Fountains Abbey, and is worth an afternoon of anyone's time.

I went to see it on a short walk from Osmotherly. The walk is just over two miles, and with great good fortune starts and ends at a pub. In fact there are three pubs in Osmotherly, all of which are nice slightly upmarket country inns doing good food and beer. Osmotherly itself is famed as the start of the Lyke Wake Walk, but you're unlikely to notice that as the walkers all tend to leave in the wee small hours. It's also on the Cleveland Way and has a youth hostel, village store and post office. Who could ask for more?

Anyway, park wherever you can and then follow the main street to near the top of the hill and turn left onto the Cleveland Way. This is nice gentle countryside and about half a mile later you come to Chapel Hill Farm. Go left here and follow the footpath diagonally downhill and then straight downhill to the woods. It has little yellow waymarkers so is easy enough to find.

Once you enter the woods the there is only one track and it's unmistakeable. The woods are strange, very dark and foreboding. They haven't been managed too well and the conifers have conspired to block out the sun, leading to all the other trees becoming very tall and straggly to try and catch up.

About halfway down through the woods I spotted a rabbit crossing the path. Then I put my glasses on and it wasn't a rabbit at all, it was a stoat carrying a still kicking baby rabbit. I'd never seen a stoat in the wild before, let alone one carrying a kill. The stoat stopped in the undergrowth and watched us for a while, then left the rabbit and disappeared. We checked on the way home and saw the rabbit had gone, so the stoat can't have been too far away.

I didn't know it at the time, but these woods are famous for stoats; they've had David Attenborough here to make a documentary, and in the Priory shop they'll even sell you a cuddly stoat. The stoats can often be seen in the Priory grounds as well, as they use the mediaeval drainage system to sneak up on unsuspecting rabbits. A unique feature about Stoats is that the females are born fertile. When just a few days old, even before their eyes are open, a male may well enter the den and impregnate the new-born females. Eleven months later they drop a litter and it starts all over again

Emerging from the wood, the priory is just across a field. It's managed by English Heritage. and in true  fashion there's a complete ban on dogs in the house or the garden. Apparently the garden is too sensitive and dogs might damage it. Nothing at all to do with the staff worrying they might have to clear up after an irresponsible owner, so that's all right then. And there's no hitching post for dogs and no water left out, so what English Heritage suggest you do with your dog I have no idea. Perhaps they assume all visitors come by car, or perhaps they just don't give a toss.

Anyway, despite the custodians the Abbey itself is well worth a visit. There's a grand manor house which was converted from the Guest House after the dissolution, and some nicely laid out formal gardens. The manor house is now used as the entrance to the abbey proper (four quid and you don't even get a guide leaflet), and the upstairs part is devoted to the usual  rather uninspired exhibition. Only this time, look round it with care as this is a Carthusian Chapterhouse and is radically different from all the other abbeys in Yorkshire. 

Carthusian monks lived in cells and even had their meals delivered to their cells. Now when I read that I thought so what, until I realised that a cell is actually a four roomed house with its own walled garden and conservatory. Not a bad job if you can get it.

The monks lived in these "cells" around the outskirts of the abbey, and one of them has been re-created. It was done in late Victorian times and I imagine it's fairly accurate. Downstairs are three rooms, plus a corridor with glass windows overlooking the garden and another roofed but open corridor leading around the outside of the courtyard to the privy. Upstairs was one big room where the monk could work. That's luxury compared to the rubbish people are paying a couple of hundred grand for nowadays just to live in the middle of some poxy city. I took a long hard look at this re-creation, and the privacy of the garden, and the meals delivered, and I thought "I could fancy doing that". Considering how crap life must have been in the Middle Ages for most poor folk, this must have been an idyllic existence. The praying might have been a bit irritating, but you can't have everything can you. The monks also has a lot of property all over the UK, stretching as far down as the Isle of Wight. Now, they may have been semi-hermits, but somebody must have had to go round and manage the properties mustn't they. A job best done in midsummer methinks.

After a good look round the priory, the walk home is nice and simple. Retrace your steps back up through the woods, and after leaving the wood about half-way up the hill is a footpath on the right. Take the footpath and follow it all the way back to Osmotherly to deal with the awful quandry of which watering hole to best quaff in.