Lordstones is one of our favourite places, a cafe built into a hillside, out on the wilds of Carlton Bank, just a few miles away from the market town of Stokesley. The cafe is named for a Celtic Standing Stone on the property which is around 5000 years old. To get to Lordstones you need to take the B1257 from Helmsley to Chop Gate (pronounced Chop Yat by the locals!) Halfway through the village there is a very sharp left hand bend, opposite the war memorial, that leads up a single track
road, about 3.5 miles along there, you will find the entrance to the cafe carpark on the right.
The cafe is popular with bikers, hikers, tourists in general and locals. They are open every day of the year except Christmas Day and New Years Day. They have a very extensive and reasonably priced menu, you can get anything from a simple sandwich to a full roast dinner, all kinds of deserts, plus several kinds of beer, and their own ice cold water on tap straight from an underground spring. They also have Carp ponds very close to the cafe. (That's one in the header pic.)
Turning left from the cafe and walking up the path towards what looks at first glance to be a golf course, there is the Standing Stone in front of you. Keep walking up towards the horizon and suddenly you will find yourself overlooking a valley 1000 feet below, and stretching off into the distance as far as the eye can see.
It is very quiet up here, the occasional twitter of a bird, or voices of hikers floating through the air. Down below in the valley you will see a beautiful patchwork of fields, the tiny white dots are sheep, and you just may hear the sound of a working tractor drifting up from the valley.
To the right you can see a conical hill, Roseberry Topping, it has an ancient and tragic legend attached to it, about a King, his wife and their small son. If you want to read the story go to the following link:
http://jacselsknit-n-krochetkorner.blogspot.com/2011/03/vt-of-y-part-2-legend-of-roseberry.html
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