Starting bright and early on New Year’s Day we welcomed in the New Year with a cheery bunch of old timers and new comers, taking the Nidderdale Way from the pretty village of Ripley to Markingham village, where we linked onto the Ripon Rowel trail to the 7 Bridges Walk into the medieval Studley Royal Deer Park.  After the mayhem of Fountains Abbey, a diversion was needed to avoid the flooded Fish Ponds Wood but this did give us the opportunity to visit How Hill Tower, which was built by John Aislabie as part of the first phase of the garden at Studley Park in c1718-23. We picked up the original route at Haddockstones and happily plodded over a multitude of muddy fields and tracks back to rejoin the Nidderdale Way.