Features

From moors to shores

Novice long-distance walker Abi Bliss spent her summer holiday trekking the Cleveland Way, which is celebrating 40 years as a National Trail. It was a week to remember…

Deciding to walk our first National Trail was the easy part. Agreeing which one was the challenge. My partner and I were ready to attempt a long-distance footpath as a summer holiday, but found picking the right trail as tricky as zipping up a jacket in a force-10 gale. We’d ruled out the South West Coastal Path (too long), the Pennine Way (too gruelling) and the Norfolk Coast Path (too flat). The West Highland Way looked promising – until I remembered the fondness of midges for my ankles. Then we heard about the Cleveland Way.

Running for 176km/109 miles across North Yorkshire, Redcar and Cleveland, the Way is an almost equal split of moorland and coast. Its first half curves around the edge of the North York Moors, from Helmsley to Saltburn-by-the-Sea. There it takes a right turn along the clifftops, hugging the coastline until Filey. “Lots of people enjoy the fact that it’s in two parts: the moorland contrasting with the cliff route. It’s that variety that really makes it special,” says National Trail Officer Malcolm Hodgson. Indeed, there’s far more to the Cleveland Way than just springy heather and salty air. Completing the route may not carry quite the same boasting rights as the Pennine Way, but it brings a comparable number of highlights and considerably fewer bogs.

For a start, there are the panoramic views from the Cleveland Hills and renowned local landmarks, such as Roseberry Topping hill. Characterful seaside towns and villages, including Whitby and Robin Hood’s Bay, alternate with wild secluded bays, such as Boggle Hole and Hayburn Wyke. The historic grandeur of Rievaulx and Whitby abbeys is tempered by the more everyday relics of mining and fishing. And there’s the intriguing, darker flip side to that heritage, of smuggling and shipwrecks.

First-time nerves

It was not only my first time walking a National Trail, but also the first time I’d hiked carrying camping gear. We had decided to do the route in eight days, staying at a mix of campsites, inns and youth hostels. As I heaved my rucksack onto my back in Helmsley’s market square, this seemed less like a good idea. How would I manage the next 100-odd miles?

My straining shoulders were forgotten as Helmsley’s bustle gave way to gentle green countryside. We soon reached Rievaulx Abbey, where a short diversion from the route passes the 12th-century Cistercian ruin with its elegant arched windows. Another spur on the path led to Kilburn White Horse, a Victorian creation cut into the limestone at the start of Sutton Bank. Passing a towline used to launch gliders from this spectacular escarpment, I marvelled at the views afforded by our elevated position. Teardrop-shaped Gormire Lake lay among woods directly below the edge, while the flat vales of York and Mowbray extended to the horizon. As we climbed slowly, the ground on our right gained the trademark heather and dry stone walls of moorland. After reaching the peak of Black Hambleton (380m/1,246ft), the path led down into Osmotherley: a village of stone cottages and convivial inns. Beyond it, the moors become more rugged and demanding. But the extra effort is rewarded with a dramatic landscape. Jutting up against the skyline, the huge boulders known as the Wainstones seem shaped by larger, more brutal hands than the soft quilt of fields below them.

Once we had negotiated a route through the rocky monuments, we picked our way down steep steps to Clay Bank, where a tedious walk along a busy road took us to our campsite at Great Broughton. I woke early the next day, full of trepidation at the thought of the stretch ahead – at nearly 20 miles, the walk’s longest. However, climbing Carr Ridge at half-past seven and reaching Urra Moor by eight brought a satisfying feeling of freedom. No one but us breathed in the fresh morning air as we made good progress along the former Rosedale Ironstone Railway, pausing only to trace the shapes of letters, hands and even a face found carved on ancient marker stones. Having shared the last few miles with the Coast to Coast path, we parted ways with it at a crossroads and headed left along the remainder of the ridge, finally dropping off the moors into picturesque Kildale. Next came the climb up to Easby Moor, where Captain Cook’s monument commemorates the seafarer, whose childhood village of Great Ayton lies just west of here. Erected in 1827, the obelisk bears a grand and distinctly un-PC inscription praising Cook for spreading “civilisation and the blessings of the Christian faith among pagan and savage tribes”.

Along the edge of Great Ayton Moor, the path diverts to climb Roseberry Topping. Often dubbed the Yorkshire Matterhorn, its distinctive wave-like profile is due to part of the hill collapsing in 1914, possibly as a result of local mining activities. It’s a steep climb but the views from the windy summit stayed with me during the less impressive miles that followed, as a forestry plantation outside Guisborough was succeeded by Skelton’s sprawling housing estates.

Reaching the coast

My spirits rose as we hit the coast at Saltburn, the resort’s restored pier offering a chance to sit and reflect upon the past four-and-a-half days and the three-and-ahalf still ahead. The fact that the Cleveland Way fits neatly into a week booked off work with a weekend either side is no coincidence. The Way was first conceived in the 1930s by Middlesbrough Rambling Club as a holiday walk to make use of the new Youth Hostel network, but it was many years before an official trail was established.

On 24th May 2009, the Cleveland Way turned 40, and the birthday was celebrated by walks along the entire length of the trail – many led by local Ramblers’ groups from Cleveland and Ryedale. And the Way enters middle age in good health, thanks to regular work carried out to combat foot erosion. An estimated 2,300 walkers complete the route every year, with a further 300,000 day-trippers using the paths. “We did a lot of work in the 1990s with slabbing, pitching and restoration,” Malcolm explains. “And we employ a maintenance ranger who is out there every day in the field, often using helpers from the National Parks volunteer force for general maintenance such as scrub-bashing.” The Cleveland Way is well signposted throughout, but once you’re on the cliff path, there’s little doubt as to where you should be going.

Climbing out of Saltburn, a hair-raisingly slight distance lies between the path and the wild flowers on the cliff edge. The storm-battered scree seems an awfully long way down. Passing a ruined building that once housed a giant fan serving the shaft of an ironstone mine, the cliff path continued up and down and up again, with each village screened from its neighbour by towering headland. A jumble of painted boats and fishermen’s huts brought colour to the ex-mining village of Skinningrove. In Staithes, whitewashed cottages clinging to the base of Cowbar Nab caught the late afternoon light. A glance back on the climb out of Runswick Bay was rewarded with a beautiful crescent of sandy beach.

Weaving our way through a crowd of tourists in the centre of Whitby, my cliffpath workout had prepared me well for the 199 steps up to Whitby Abbey. Even on a sunny day, the building was a stark and foreboding sight and it was easy to see how the ruins inspired Bram Stoker to use the location for Dracula’s arrival in England. On the open clifftop once more, we passed a disused lighthouse (now a holiday let) – a reminder of the region’s dangerous stormy seas, that was underlined by a rusting shipwreck we spotted just before Robin Hood’s Bay.

With its knot of steep and narrow streets steeped in smuggling folklore, the bay’s status as a gem of the Yorkshire coast is well deserved. But our day’s walking ended a mile further south at Boggle Hole, where the seaweed-green cove houses a well appointed youth hostel, its bedrooms named after local shipwrecks.

Collapsing cliffs

The next morning we followed the trail inland to Ravenscar, the site of a holiday resort planned by Victorian entrepreneurs. Alas, demand was less than the planners had hoped, leaving a ghost village of a dozen scattered houses among stone outlines of roads. It was a warm day, involving yet more climbs and descents, so the lush green woodland of Hayburn Wyke – a small nature reserve – came as a relief, with its pretty twin waterfalls cascading onto a boulder-strewn beach. The sun gave way to threatening grey clouds on our final day, but the amusement arcades of Scarborough’s South Bay provided plenty of colour.

But while they couldn’t divert us from the path, unfortunately, the cliff collapse at Cayton Bay did. According to Malcolm Hodgson, nothing can stop the sea from eating away at this part of the coast. “Our policy has always been to accept the retreat taking place and to move the path,” he says. “We’ve been working with landowners to manage that.” With the cliff edge creeping ever closer to residents’ gardens, the Cayton Bay footpath will soon be relocated to a road behind the housing, before cutting back into some woods. “It’s not ideal, but with coastal erosion you have no choice,” he adds.

Reunited with the footpath, our walk came to a soggy conclusion, as the rain that had been miraculously absent from the previous seven-and-a-half days arrived with a vengeance, drenching our waterproofs and trickling into our boots. By the time we reached the stone seat at Filey, where the ends of the Cleveland Way and the Wolds Way meet, I felt as though I’d truly earned my National Trail stripes. The Way unofficially continues onto Filey Brigg: a finger of limestone that juts half a mile into the sea. At low tide, this honeycomb of sea-eroded rock makes a dramatic end point to the walk.

But, with the tide rising up to meet the pelting rain, we made a squelchy beeline for the nearest café, saving the end for another day. Unlike the arguments we had deciding on this exhilarating National Trail for our first long-distance walking holiday, this last decision was instant and mutual.

TIME/DISTANCE: Allow seven to 10 days for the whole 176km/109-mile trail from Helmsley to Filey. MAPS: OS Explorer OL26, OL27, 301; Landranger 94, 100, 101. TRAVEL TO: The nearest trains to the start run to York or Malton, where regular buses go to Helmsley (✆ 01347 838990, www.stephensonsofeasingwold.co.uk). Filey is served by Northern Rail (✆ 08457 484950, www.northernrail.org) with connections to York, Doncaster and Hull. TRAVEL AROUND: Through the summer holidays and on Sundays (Easter to October), the North York Moors National Park runs a Moorsbus service to points along the Cleveland Way. Several luggage carriers also serve the trail, including Coast to Coast Holidays (✆ 01642 489173, www.coasttocoast-holidays.co.uk). GUIDES: Cleveland Way by Ian Sampson (£12.99, Aurum Press, ISBN 978-1845132484) — the official National Trail guide, featuring OS strip maps. A new edition is planned for 2010. FURTHER INFO: ✆ 01439 770657, www.nationaltrail.co.uk/clevelandway

• This entry was posted on: Thursday, November 26th, 2009 at 4:35 pm
• Filed under: Current Feature, Features, Home Feature, UK Walking, Walk Winter 2009
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