The poetically named Gypsey Race is East Yorkshire’s most enigmatic watercourse. One that only works part-time, like me, and keeps disappearing unpredictably, also like me. It’s a winterbourne; it’s a chalk stream; and it’s a predictor of disaster. It’s part of the mystery behind the Wold Newton Triangle, Yorkshire’s equivalent of the one in Bermuda.
Politically correct agitators will be disappointed to learn that ‘Gypsey Race’ is nothing to do with Travellers. ‘Gypsey’ is an archaic East Yorkshire dialect word for an intermittent stream, and ‘race’ means ‘rush of water’. The river itself starts just west of Duggleby, and finishes about 25 miles later in Bridlington harbour… sort of.
Sort of, because being a winterbourne, ie seasonal, its presence is not guaranteed. After heavy rainfall in winter, it can be a proper river all the way; in a dry spell it can be a few disconnected dribbles separated by empty grooves in the earth.
And on my visit today, on a fine early spring afternoon, it kept disappearing and reappearing like a dodgy company director who regularly makes off with investors’ cash before starting up elsewhere under a new name.
I rode over the wolds from York, taking NCN Route 66 towards Stamford Bridge. Then it was back lanes through villages such as Buttercrambe, Birdsall and Wharram, with lots of laney ups and downs through rolling farmland.
Between Wharram and Duggleby is the source of the Gypsey Race: south of the road if you believe Google Maps, north of the road if you go by Open Street Maps.
Well, the source today was clearly north. As so often, Google Maps is rubbish. Great for showing you Drive Thru Coffee Shop Near Me, terrible at cycle routes.
But Gypsey Race is a slippery customer. In Duggleby it was a roadside stream, picturesquely crossed by little bridges to residences. Then it was a ford.
Then it was a small river, meandering through pastureland past munching sheep.
At West and East Lutton it abruptly contracted to being little more than a tiny drain. Then at Helperthorpe (a thankful village I’ve blogged separately) it vanished.
It does a lot of this. The land round here is all chalk, which slow water can pass through like unelected oligarchs permeating the White House. The Gypsey’s preferred route to Bridlington is underground when it can.
But in areas where the flow is brisker, especially after rain, it skids over the top of the chalk and becomes a proper stream. Hence its on-off, now-you-see-it-now-you-don’t character.
The Gypsey reappeared abruptly at pleasant Wold Newton, suddenly being generous enough to fill the village’s photogenic pond in the centre. The ‘Wold Newton Triangle’ (recently featured on the BBC website) is a supposed area of mystical activity.
This involves such things as the ancient Rudston Monolith, traces of many barrows and henges… and the Race’s supposed ability to predict doom. When it floods, it’s said, very bad things follow. Websites all trot out the same list: Black Death, Civil War, World Wars, bad winters of 1947 and 1962.
Hmm. On the one hand, the ‘woe waters’ flooded in 2024, and look what happened in the US elections. On the other, look what happened on 23 Jun 2016, and it didn’t flood that year. So I’m sceptical.
I’ve often stopped at Wold Newton for a snack by that pond, and really must try the pub one day. But today I was carrying on.
East of Wold Newton, the Gypsey looked to be going strong, a proper river now, maybe even a chalk stream: Europe’s most northerly, it’s said, though its ecological status is unfortunately ‘Bad’.
But then, in typical Gypsey fashion, it suddenly disappeared. Just a dry dip in the landscape.
There was only grass in Burton Fleming.
And then, capriciously, back it came in Rudston, as a sliver of a brook. Rudston is famous for its monolith, a vertical conundrum in the churchyard, Britain’s tallest standing stone.
What? When? Who? How? Nobody knows. It’s clearly very old, it’s clearly gritstone from miles away that somehow got here in all this chalk, it was clearly a big deal for someone to put it up, but all we have is guesswork.
I followed the B road from here down to Bridlington. It’s one of my favourite seaside resorts, which I’ve been to many times (often at the end of the Way of the Roses). The Gypsey Race flows through the centre of the town, frequently with paths at the side.
There’s a waterside parklet by Lidl, just by the train station, after which the waters duck under culverts out of sight for one final time before entering the harbour. There I was pleased to see another Gypsey Race, this being a boat moored at the harbourside.
I like Brid, and its no-nonsense, bucket’n’spade, seaside character. It has good fish and chips, which I enjoyed down the harbour this breezy, sunny late afternoon. The chalk promontory of Flamborough Head stretched out into the calm waters of the North Sea, like a chalk promontory stretching out into a calm sea.
Hmm. After a day of watching liquid disappear at regular intervals, what activity might I be able to do to emulate that in, say, the Wetherspoon…?