Well who would have thunk I’d be craving a hill but it really did feel good after yesterday’s interminable monotony.
Our route today, after Beacon Hill with its radio station,
was virtually all on the Cleveland Way, a path that, by our experience, was really well managed and well signposted. The full route is 110 miles long and runs between Helmsley in Ryedale and Filey in Scarborough. It skirts around the edges of most of the North York Moors National Park in the shape of a mangled horseshoe. We had a little 10 mile nibble of the north west part today and it took us through a variety of terrain.
The main part were the moors themselves exposed on the hills. Our path was a stone slabbed walkway which made it fairly easy for us to pass through (at least in this season) and protected the flora and fauna around us. I didn’t quite realise that it would be so colourful with a real autumnal vibrancy. My camera just could not do it true justice.
It did get really warm and sunny sometimes and we also got our friend the wind back on the tops after he’d gone off in a sulk yesterday. But we also had rain and some terrific hailstone meteor showers. I found the white balls whizzing down past me from behind mesmerising but a few of us had peeled off too many layers from the previous sunny patch and found it all too cold and painful. It was a bit of a ‘four seasons in one day’ kind of a day and we were adding layers and taking them off again several times.
We met the Girls again at the cairn at the summit of Live Moor. Turns out one of them lives in the next street to me! What are the odds!
As well as the moors we had a few lovely woodlands to trail through, some of which were carpeted with bluebells. Some of which were muddy quagmires! Sally managed to fall over in it, which would have been a good camera moment if anybody had thought in time, but she still managed to have less mud on her shoes than me.
This particular path was slightly off the track as we were staying in Great Broughton tonight, so instead of taking up the offer of a lift from Clay Bank Top, we walked straight there. We’ve kind of decided that for the whole two weeks of this challenge our only mode of transport should be our feet, and occasionally, after comedy falls and arduous journeys, our knees.
theleadlesspencil 