A Walk On The Wild Side

York ghost trail guide Ian Stuart swaps city spooks for lakeside meanderings

EVERY morning, Digby and I take a walk round Clifton Lake in York. Digby is a Border/Jack Russell cross who understands every word of English and is tortured by the fact that he’s a dog and, therefore, will never be able to speak it.

The lake is shaped like a kidney bean, half a mile or so round and fringed with trees and bushes, with a stretch of rough woodland along one side. And, though you’d never believe it, it’s entirely artificial, created as a communal space when all the surrounding houses were built in the seventies and eighties.

It is a place of wonder. Geese come up from the city – flocks of Canadas and greylags shouting as they sideslip down, touching the water with a sharp hiss. Every autumn they have a parliament, hundreds of them in their clans and families, cropping the grass and snoozing. I counted over 200 once.