Day 13: Clay Bank Top to Blakey Ridge

Rain, sleet and hail showers driven by Westerley wind

Distance covered today: 14.4km (8.9mi)

Last night's B&B: Buck Inn Hotel

% Complete: Cumulative distance: 85.7%: 270.5km

Total Ascent/Total Descent: 287m/147m

GPS satellite track of today's route: Day 13 (click!)

What a contrast!  The roller coaster was replaced by a railway line!  Literally!  I had been expecting more of the same, but after the first, and by now expected, lung-busting morning climb out of the valley, all changed.  The path meandered along the Cleveland Way’s flagstones, and then quite suddenly the Cleveland Way veered off at an acute angle and the Coast-to-coast continued on a disused Victorian railway line that had originally been constructed for the transport of minerals from these rich moors.  The rain-showers turned to hail, but the wind was from astern so that the weather wasn’t troubling at all. Moreover, the even, porous, tinder track meant that the walking was particularly easy, and I was able to gaze in awe at the splendour of the changing colours on the moors around me and in the valleys below.

The downside of all this, was that I had anyway scheduled a relatively short walk for today, and I had been packed out of the B&B quite early, so that given the faster pace on the railway track, I made my destination, the Lion Inn on Blakey Ridge by midday!  Out of the rain, and in front of a roaring fire, I was perfectly content in the brilliant atmosphere.  Then they all started to arrive!  With one or two exceptions who are either still on the trail, or have ceased and desisted, the team grew and grew.  I had many explanations of who had been where over the past few days and many more war-stories, but the fact that the Lion Inn is such an obvious resting spot on the trail meant that everyone had just converged.

There was Bill, the Yank from Los Angeles, aspirant actor biding his time in commercials while waiting for the break-through, smiling from ear to ear.  I first met him on Dent Hill, immersed in guidebooks, wary of taking half a dozen steps without consulting one of his many guides.  He is a popular member of the team, mostly because he was initially slower than everyone else because each step needed careful research.  He has certainly changed!  He doesn’t exactly bound over the hills, but the early trepidation has been replaced with a genuine heartiness which just glows out of him!

The two Aussie girls, Judy and Sue arrived.  They seem to have taken a very relaxed approach to the planning of their trip.  Every time I've seen them, they have been asking others about how to get from A to B. Today, apparently, their trip-planners had omitted a leading 1 from the 18 miles of the scheduled journey, leading the girls to think that they had only 8 miles to walk.  They were not impressed!  They were trying to cadge a lift off others, such as myself, whose B&B proprietors were scheduled to collect them from the Lion Inn to deliver them to their B&B.  I introduced them to the two Canadian girls, Giselle and Dianne who were in a similar plight.  There was no helping the four of them though, and as I was driven away from the pub, I caught sight of the four of them, no-one talking to each other, forlornly walking up the road to Rosedale Head.  I will have to do the same tomorrow, but on fresh legs and in brilliant sunshine! (Hopefully?!)

Andrea, the Kiwi doctor and Marilyn the Canadian widow weren’t present for some reason.  Marilyn especially has complicated travel plans, with an elderly aunt somewhere near Glaisdale, but I was assured by my fellow travellers that these two women would certainly show up in Robin Hood’s Bay on Thursday. Andrea makes slow progress, but she is an excellent map-reader and is very methodical, so she’ll make it. Just as I wrote this, Marilyn turned up in my hotel for dinner along with Bill the Yank. I am miles off the route this evening, in a village called Rosedale Abbey. This is indeed a small world!

Also unsurprisingly absent at the Lion Inn were Jane and Eric, the two Canucks from New Brunswick, though I had greeted Eric earlier in the day, as I have almost every morning for some time.  Eric has health problems, and he also is married to Jane, who is in turn the fastest walker I have ever met! No wonder poor old Eric can’t keep up. Their arrangement is that he walks with her for the first few kilometres every day, then turns around and heads back to the car. He then races (well, knowing Eric, drives carefully and considerately) round to the end of the walk, where he heads back up the trail to meet Jane and they complete the walk together.  In Richmond, they came unstuck!  I met Eric who had parked his car and was coming back up the trail, but no Jane had emerged. I assured him that she had been ahead of me, and he opined that she had obviously reached Richmond faster than he had! Neither of them have mobiles, so finding each other is an issue. Eric told me the following day that they had finally met at their B&B.

I could go on, but I sense you get the picture.  What all these people have overwhelmingly in common is that they are mostly from the English-speaking Commonwealth (in which I naturally include the US, though Bill tells me there was some war of independence or something! I understand tea was involved). The other thing which is generally true, though there are exceptions, Bill being one, they tend to be older people, often retired.  Surprisingly, the majority on this occasion were also women.  They all tend to be new to long-distance walking and the Coast-to-coast has been fiercer and more demanding than they anticipated.  

More than on any previous long-distance trail, I have interacted with all these people and many more besides.  In some ways, this is unsurprising, given the popularity of the walk and therefore the density of walkers on most days. I understand that the Coast-to-coast is no longer just the most popular long-distance walk in the UK; it is the most popular long-distance walk in the world! Sadly, partly because of numbers and all those interactions, I doubt that many of the new relationships will outlive this adventure. 

There is though something rather special about watching a group of people who just a fortnight ago had never met each other, take over a pub and interact amongst each other with a joyfulness that makes the regulars feel left out! 

Looking back over yesterday's roller-coaster. Four peaks are just visible, the furthest being Carlton Moor and the nearest the Wainstones

These ancient waymarks on the Cleveland Way are still mysterious

Here comes the rain!

Another pre-historic waymark

Awe-inspiring cloudscapes: this will be more than rain! It hailed!!

The four roller-coaster peaks were still visible down there, just!

Those people ahead on full zoom are undoubtedly Dianne and Giselle. I usually catch up to them about this time each day!

The famous "Face Stone" grimacing at me at the top of Urra Moor. Origin unknown.

Here comes the hail!

An incongruous fir plantation right in the middle of the moors

The green fields of Farndale start to appear

The disused, Victorian railway line, built to facilitate exploitation of the local minerals

With much attendant pollution. This appears to me to be iron oxide, probably mixed with other noxious extractive chemicals

I persuaded this red grouse to pose for the photo opportunity. He was very reluctant to start...

Incredible colours through changing atmospherics. This doesn't do it justice!!

The moor leading down to Farndale

The storms have eased. Peace in the valley...

The day's peculiar elevation profile!