Castle Howard is not far from the A64 towards Slingsby. The approach is straight and narrow, and marked by large obelisks.Care is needed as the road goes between very narrow arches! Surprisingly, the large car park is free, although the entrance to the grounds and house is quite expensive. The ladies decided they were hungry, and ordered bacon sandwiches at £5.95 each. I chose a latte and helped Joan out with some mushrooms and tomato, while the rest of the group decided against having anything but a sit down! A full english would be £9.95, but probably worth it. We started our walk along the road that we had used by car, but grass verges were very wide so no problem. After a short while we joined a track road named Centenary Way, which links to many tracks along the way. Views of the house are seen through the trees, I'm sure it would be worth a visit on another occasion, although the gardens don't seem that large. The Mausoleum, Pyramid and New River Bridge are all visible on this walk, but to get to see the Great Lake, you'd need to climb over a fence, or visit and pay. As we approached the vast woodland, we needed to go through a farm. Unfortunately this is now a private access road, so we had to divert the route and form a figure of eight instead. We did see the Four Faces monument in the woods, which would have been much easier to reach if we had been able to use the private path. Soon we were in the lovely village of Welburn. Here there is a nice cafe and a pub called The Crown & Cushion. We stayed for a few drinks, and the food looked great! We'd already had lunch.... The route is quite well signposted, the usual length is about 5.5 miles, our walk was a little over 9 miles with no real hills to worry about so quite easy. The excellent farm shop was still open when we got back to the car park, so we topped up on sausages and burgers, and chocolate for the journey back home. A link for Castle Howard House and ground is below: http://www.castlehoward.co.uk/house-and-grounds/the-grounds-and-gardens/lakes-and-waterways.html