Part Five – The River Foss 

  There are only two disadvantages to the Foss.  It slices through Haxby, Earswick, New Earswick and Huntington, nowadays an almost unbroken sprawl of suburbs.  The bank which holds the path generally gives the illusion of a rural idyll.  On the far side, though, you mainly get a view of annoyingly large and well kept back gardens.  Mostly these end in weeping willows and other trees nodding towards the willow.  Occasionally, though, a gazebo or some other piece of nonsense pops into view and the teeth must be ground.  The other drawback is that virtually nobody from all these areas actually walks along the path.  Instead they jet miles out into the country where they can have picnics and strolls along rivers looking quite like the Foss.  The only group proving an exception cause their own problems.  So if you are using the Foss Way or Ebor Way (the two paths seem fairly interchangeable) then either buy, borrow or, necessary, construct a canine.  The latter method can be achieved by either balsa wood or a lightning-struck laboratory, incidentally.  Otherwise other dog walkers will eye you suspiciously, wondering where your beast has bound off to and why you can't control the thing; or if you are insane.  Which, if madness is defined as a defiance of societal norms, you probably are.

 It's a little hard to choose where to start our walk along the Foss.  The river rises at Yearsley in the heart of North Yorkshire.  The Foss Way follows it most of the time, though occasionally has to veer away if the banks are owned by farmers following ancient rural traditions by telling people to piss off out of their land.  This, however, is supposed to be a guide to York so we ought to stick close to, well, York.  So drive out about four miles into Earswick, eventually turning left into Earswick Village.  The houses a long the street are old, expensive and a little idiosyncratic.  Chief holder of the latter quality is a half-timbered bungalow on the right.  Both the stack and the twin chimneys shooting off are three times a sensible height, as if trying to catch up with their brethren on two-story houses.  Just before the river, the neighbourhood sadly turns into one of those modern soulless 'exclusive estates' for overly rich men.  For once the guilty party isn't Barretts but Hogg the Builder.  This is actually a respectable family firm based in Strensall; but imagine them as a quaint cartoon character and forgiveness is possible.

 Cross the river on an ugly but convenient footbridge.  The real route turns left but you may want to make a quick detour right.  The path here is usually a meagre gap between high grasses.  During normal weather, the Foss has become an amusingly shallow trickle festooned with duckweed.  Despite this, somebody has erected some sort of rudimentary flood defences, a series of twin diagonal planks in the water.  Well, we are cautious folk.  Stark fields are just visible at the top of the high left-hand bank and, beyond them, a tall pylon.  Mysterious at first, it soon turns out to be part of a sewerage works.  So you might want to turn round and retrace your steps at this point.

 Walk back past the u. but c.f. and you soon past under another bridge.  The chief pleasure to be derived from this is hearing the traffic on the ring road thundering by several inches above your head.  There was once some lively graffiti on the inner sides but it's been cleaned off now.  And I don't understand the mentality of the people responsible for this sort of thing.  They spend weeks scrubbing and feeling self-righteous, and for what?  So we get a view of lovely grey concrete.  A different criticism of graffiti, moving away from the usual 'yobs ruining our country' deal, was presented by Jonathan Jones, the Guardian's art critic.  He argued that as it has not developed beyond the late 1980's style of jagged colourful letters, it can no longer be considered high art.  Which is very true.  But Monet did nothing in his later life beyond bash out identical images of water lilies, and you can buy mouse mats with those on.

 The whole stretch of river beyond the bridge encourages such pointless ruminations, being not especially inspiring.  The path itself is an over-developed stone one.  The ring road takes a long time to recede from hearing, as these roads always do.  For one fine moment you think the river is looping away from the Earswick-Huntington sprawl; but it then bends back and there it is you again.  And the house haven't any trees at the bottom of the gardens so you get them in the nude, as it were.  The only pleasant part is the muddle of trees and bushes on the near bank.  If you want to know precisely which trees and bushes form this muddle, well, have a look yourself.  Then come back and tell me so I can put it into any later updates I can be bothered to do to this site.

 Matters improve when Huntington Parish Church comes into view.  It has served the older parts of Huntington, and presumably the scattered farms which preceded it, for the past 800 years.  Nowadays it also admirably mixes Catholic with Protestant services.  The church itself is a nice haphazard jumble.  At one end it is a low and very old ( what? )  Then this turns into a newer, higher piece with a great grey slate roof.  And feebly clamouring for attention behind that is an ancient and rather squat tower.  The gravestones reveal the age of the church, their words almost weathered into anonymity.  They also stand in ground which is generally as unkempt as all old churchyards would be.

 Beyond is a nice copse with vile, prominent 'Keep Out' signs.  Cross a style and you are into a large, buttercup-spotted meadow.  The Foss does a wide sweep around it so there are two options: the purist one of sticking to the bank or the lazy decision to short-cut across the grass.  At this point I should probably mention some of the wildlife to be found along the Foss.  Well, the meadow sometimes has cows in.  And you can see large cow pats.  All right, I'll try harder.  Blackbirds, magpies and other noisy buggers sit in the trees.  Swallows dart just above the surface of the river to vacuum up the flies, like tiny, jet-powered basking sharks.  You can occasionally spot kingfishers if you can stand waiting for three hours for a blur of cobalt.  The fields around Earswick are sometimes topped by kestrels, who seem to live a particularly dull life: hover, spot a little furry thing, swoop, miss, exclaim 'D'oh!', repeat.  There are various tits; blue, coal, long tailed.  Though not Conal Gregory (boom boom).  And despite its rather suburban location, I once saw a deer in this meadow.  It appeared from over yonder horizon, galloped past me, tried to leap over the river, failed, climbed out, struggled up the far bank into a garden, saw nothing there to amuse it, tried to leap back over the river, failed, climbed out and disappeared from whence it came.  As I watched its sodden, retreating form I reflected on the grace and nobility of such animals.

 Soon afterwards you will reach New Earswick.  Leave the river for a little while.  The path remains perfectly pleasant but it is worth taking a stroll around New Earswick.  It was designed by the great philanthropist Joseph Rowntree (see Part Three) as a model village.  Now, model villages come in two shapes.  Some were laid out by aristocratic landowners at much the same time as they got Capability Brown to wreck their gardens.  They were hideous re-enactments of Ye Olde Rural England, Constable paintings come to life and intended to remind the nobleman's labourers that they were still little more than feudal peasants.  The second, far more interesting, sort were products of wealthy eccentrics realising their own slightly unbalanced visions.  New Earswick is no Portmerion, that magnificent nervous breakdown transformed into brick and stone.  But Joseph Rowntree's friends may have looked at his plans and muttered 'Oh what a great mind is here overthrown.'  Standard estates nowadays ring New Earswick but Rowntree's utopia remains at the heart.  It is a strange land of unexpected alleyways and secret courtyards, a Middle Ages grotto for the middle classes.  The size of the place is apparently expanded threefold by the labryinthe of winding walkways.  I defy anyone, whatever their age, to explore them without experiencing an urge to play hide-and-seek.  Perhaps the oddest aspect is that it is a suburb designed to benefit pedestrians, rather than pummel them into stigmatised insignificance.  New Earswick's actual buildings are very conventional, standard semi-detacheds with a few wannabe cottages, though one does stand out.  This is the Folk Hall, which has a vast sloping tile roof, a miniature oxidised copper tower and splashes of faux half-timber.  Take a glimpse at it just before rejoining the Foss and get a thrilling frission of the spirit of Portmerion gusting into Yorkshire.

 The Foss Walk, meanwhile, runs under Link Road, an unimaginatively titled connection between New Earswick and Huntington.  There are actually two ways to descend to the Foss from Link Road.  One is a neat pair of steps leading to the orderly path on the correct bank.  The other drops into a heavily wooded sliver of land created by a temporary forking of the river.  This little island is… well, nothing really.  Not habitated, not a nature reserve, not apparently belonging to anybody.  You have to run down a steep earth bank from Link Road to access it, but there are no fences or warnings about killer patrol dogs.  I merely mention all this because a totally unclaimed slice of nature is an utter anomaly in modern suburbia.  And if there are any children reading (which you shouldn't be, because this book contains no cuss words but some very pompous ones) the island makes a fine place to run around pretending to be soldiers.  It also nearly became the first location shot for Ben the Magic Dragonears, a film which promised to be even worst than The Perspiration Gang.  Sadly Ben suffered the fate of many doomed productions – we realised how terrible it was and gave up.

 After darting under Link Road the path rises up as the Foss enters a sort of mini-gully.  You then pass right by a little white cottage which looks lovely and is probably horrible to live in, with a busy main road on one side and bunches of gawpers on the other.  The route tips you onto that road for a little bit, but you then rejoin the river as it curves around a field behind the old Vickers factory. (bit about vickers, if I ever find it).  The path more or less disappears.  And in the middle of the field, only approximately close to a murmur of a track, is a little stone commemorating the opening of the Foss Way by who, when.  I don't particularly like civic events but this inauguration ceremony must have been something to see.  A group of dignitaries not anywhere much, clipping a red ribbon which stands in a void leading to and from nowhere.

 Another ugly but convenient footbridge appears on the left, but it leads onto Huntington Road so ignore it.  We are approaching town but this stretch of the Foss Way is particularly derelict.  The path turns back into a mud line, often half-swamped by grasses and nettles.  The lower bank is an impassable jungle.  The trees on either side almost touch at places so you are close to walking under a canopy of leaves.  Squint a little to ignore the gardens of the Huntington Road houses, occasionally block your ears and you can pretend you are walking along a tranquil little beck in a deserted vale.  My favourite memory from an area packed with fine ones comes from a particularly cold winter in my childhood.  The Foss had frozen over completely.  We took a few hesitant steps and found the ice held.  We were able to walk on the surface of the river all the way to Yearsley Baths.  And then back again.  And returned to repeat the feat in the afternoon.  Unfortunately we forgot that temperatures rise during the day and this wasn't Dickensian London.  The gossamer cracks suddenly appearing in the ice, the frantic sprint for sure… Well, you can guess the rest.  Thankfully, while reservoirs may be deeper than you think, the Foss rarely is.

 A better place for a swim is the Yearsley Baths, which the path eventually runs path.  As mentioned, the baths were originally built by Joseph Rowntree for his works and then donated to the city.  And if you like paying money to splash around in your underwear in front of strangers, and don't mind a rather variable level of hygiene control, they're worth a visit.  Yearsley Baths have been developed a little over the years but never actually redesigned.  So the layout shows that not everyone in the late nineteenth century was a prude; or at least, that some weren't allowed to be.  There are no separate changing rooms as such.  Instead you get individual booths which open right out onto the main pool.  Not ones with proper doors either, just panels intended to cover the right strategic areas.  You have to strip off and dress while hearing a hundred shouts right beside you, hoping the bolt on the panel holds and that nobody is going to try to be funny.  This is about as racy as York gets so make the most of it.

 The path ends shortly after the baths.  Climb up some steps onto the main road, try to somehow make it over the crossroads without being flattened and continue following the Foss down Huntington Road.  This is quite a nice stretch of road aesthetically.  The pavement runs right beside the river for a while.  The bird life is surprisingly varied; I've seen coots, moorhens and tufted ducks amidst the usual mallards and geese.  Across the way, rows of old and grand terraces are broken up by the Grange, a picturesque cluster of students' residences.  And the bridge carrying the cycle track runs over, so you might spot the occasionally firmly wedged Homebase van.  Sadly, out of all the many streets in York which try to kill pedestrians, Huntington Road perhaps tries the hardest.  One pavement runs across the maws of several thousand rat runs.  The one on the river side abruptly ends, thanks to the incursions of a garage which should have been dynamited decades ago.  Which gives you the choice of walking along a main road for about twenty yards or crossing it rather close to a blind curve.  Salvation comes from a gap in the railings and another path curling away from the road, following the river again.

 It takes you past the rear of that bloody garage and some rather nice back gardens.  And then a long, high brick wall topped by barbed wire.  Probably my fault I know, but this combination always puts the phrase 'Nazi prison camp' into my mind.  It actually only belongs to an old Calor Gas works, but it's still more pleasant to focus on the far bank.  There are a line of weeping willows, another of some trees less recognisable than weeping willows, a sliver of a park haunted day and night by dog walkers.  And another view of that community sports centre.  From here it is a large aluminium barn, looking more surreal and less connected to any sport than ever.  The path rejoins the road by a patch of grass nicknamed – if only by myself – Goose Green.  Basically, it is where you go to get geese.  Not any rare species, for there is only ever canadas and greylags.  But if you want a high volume, in both senses, then it is for you.  And if while you're watching them you can make them stay where they are and stop wandering down my street and pooing on my lawn, that would be fine.  But the geese show the right attitude towards the cars which plague Huntington Road.  Most hold-ups are caused by one or two waddling slowly across the road, honking disdainfully at the fuming motorists.  One day I must try that myself.

 Turn left at Goose Green to head down Foss Bank.  Across the river is the unholy mess which is whatever the hell they're doing with the old gas works and environs.  (Not entirely sure but I suspect 'unique developments of executive flats' may be involved.)  On the other side of the road is the brick wall around Sainsbury's.  High, impassive and strewn with ivy, it increasingly resembles the fortifications of the local manor; which kind of matches the role supermarkets play in modern society.  Beyond is a car park where, on evenings, teenagers indulge in the traditional British pastime of trying to do tricky moves on skateboards, falling off and looking sheepish.  And swearing, quite often.  Such nonsense takes us nicely to the Layerthorpe Bridge.  I have already been sarcastic about this, Councillor Dave Merritt's legacy to the city.  I intend being so again.  The problem they had was four roads meeting and crossing quite a narrow river.  Not exactly an impossible conundrum, one might think.  It took them the best part of a decade to solve it, however.  And what finally emerged was a hopelessly complex collection of circles and lines which defies all logical thought.  You seem to have to cross about nine roads to ever get over the thing, and if you're not paying close attention then you end up back where you started.  Keep trying, though, always focus on the point ahead.  And eventually, as yonder sun is setting, you might eventually get onto Foss Islands Road.

 Foss Islands Road does not, sadly, bring any views of islands.  There is a rather nice, forested sliver of land on the far side of the river.  However, a treacherous arm connected to the mainland reveals it to technically be a peninsular.  There may be an island underneath the dogs breakfast of a roundabout at the Foss Bank end of the road.  But there may also be peninsulas, fjords and Lost Cities of Atlantis under there and nobody would know.  On the other side of Foss 'Islands' is a dismal stretch of those warehouse-style shops.  Then, more entertainingly, a dizzying tower and a large municipal tip rusting gently into purgatory.  A slab of the Deane Valley implanted into central York, perhaps.  A blue iron pedestrian bridge loops a steep arc over the river.  Sadly, padlocked gates bars prevents access.  A sign on the gate reveals it to be Monk Bridge, opened in 1932.  You somehow get the impression it was condemned in 1933.  I did some fairly stupid things in my childhood, many of which involved walking or climbing on things which really shouldn't be walked or climbed on.  But even I only braved Monk Bridge a couple of times.  The actual act of crossing the bridge is the only source of pleasure anyway.  It leads nowadays to a sprawl of soul-destroying offices connected to the nearby MAFF headquarters.  (Or whatever MAFF calls itself nowadays to hide the humiliating fact that its remit concerns fish and sheep and piggie-wiggie).  Take, instead, a path which leads along the Foss away from the road.  It leads through a slightly minatorial tunnel enlivened by vivid graffiti.  Then it gives more views of that false island and one of the most remarkable sights in York.

 The path climbs up a building for about twenty feet and runs along the windows of flats and offices.  Such proximity to unknown living quarters is always slightly disquieting for me.  Or rather, quieting; I always talk in hushed tones, wary of disturbing the legions of light sleepers inside.  Yes, even during the daytime.  The building which houses them stretches up for some distance but it is hard to get any visual hold on it.  Then the path drops down again and crosses the river.  Then turn around and you can view the structure properly.  Rowntrees and Terry’s are late-Victorian citadels of industry.  This fortress is smaller and its walls are made vulnerable by all those windows, but it somehow emanates a greater aura of invincibility.  The impression is probably created by a great, broad brick tower which looms up from the near side of the building.  One can imagine besieged office workers once standing on top and pouring burning pitch onto invaders sailing up the river.  Which would be extremely effective, as the only vessels which can navigate the Foss are rubber dinghies.  The reality of the castle seems only slightly more prosaic nowadays.  Called first Leetham's Mill and then Navigation Warehouse, it housed cocoa beans bound for Hull in those unimaginable times when you could actually use the Foss for shipping.  The tower can often be seen rearing up over rooftops in this part of town, an inexplicable sight of mysterious import.  Close up it is even more spectacular and incongruous.

 A rather nice little wharf gives the only real proper view of Foss Bridge to be had.  An arched stone construction with columned parapets, it was apparently built in 1811 which seems ridiculous.  What it most closely resembles is those ancient packhorse bridges which festoon the parts of the country which have thatched cottages; the sort which must have been even more annoying for carts then than they are for motorists now.

 The Foss doesn't quite end here but your walk probably should.  We have come right into the city centre now.  An absence of access, paths and land means you have to trespass and, occasionally, swim to continue following the river faithfully.  You can go down streets which track its course approximately, occasionally getting glimpses of water in the distance.  But this would take you down Infernos like Stonebow and Piccadilly.  I've already dragged you there on the City Centre walks; I don't advise visiting them again.  Better to start on the southern Ouse walk below and witness the final moments of the Foss from the perspective of its consumer.  For which, just click the handy 'Ouse Walks' link below.

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