August 19, 2000: Egton Bridge to High Hawsker
Sleights Moor
During the night I reached over to my bedside table and brought down a rickety old lamp; when I turned the overhead light on and tried to restore it, it toppled a second time because one of its leaden feet had fallen off; now make that two. I laid it on its side and went back to sleep, but when I got up the skies were also leaden and it looked like rain at any minute.
When the Lees and I went to breakfast at 8:30 there was no doubt about it; we would start today’s march in the rain. By this time we had all switched to eggs only to start the day, but they piled so many scrambled specimens on my toast that I couldn’t finish them. I arranged for some packed lunches and we went back upstairs to finish packing. I told Mr. Boulton about the lamp and the cold water tap and he seemed to take this news philosophically.
In some senses it is almost a comfort to begin a day in wet – since you have the time and the comfort to get your rain gear on first. I wore my rain pants over my shorts and this didn’t make for the clammy adventure I had at first feared – and it certainly saved my by now abandoned trail cords from more muck. Tosh put on her new Mac in a Sack outfit and at 9:30 we strolled up the driveway and repeated our crossing of the Esk bridge. Tosh was well behind here, having paused to adjust some item of clothing, so I crept ahead to take a picture of the Postgate pub, then returned to join the Lees in leaving Egton Bridge on an unpaved track that paralleled the river on its north side. Once we passed an ancient toll road noticeboard that informed us just how much it would cost us to get by here with our hearse. We passed under a railway bridge and approached the road into Grosmont – but here there was a most unusual sighting.
A woman with a crook and a sheepdog was just at this moment unpenning from a nearby field a flock of 28 geese – with whom she had been walking coast to coast! They hadn’t been using Wainwright’s path – for their itinerary called for stops at various abbeys on route, but they had been at it for days, with three or four of the animals “retired” on the way – this means left with some friendly farmer, not eaten. A support car was there with a trailer in tow – their means of transport when they weren’t in waddling mode. The lady in charge was on a private mission to raise £10,000 to buy a special wheelchair for the arthritic son of a friend and Tosh immediately offered to make a donation. “Have you got five pounds?” she asked me when the time came. I did – so I made her donation for her. Then the feathered flock, who seemed to enjoy the rain, were off, climbing the first hill on their way to Whitby Abbey, their terminus. “I wonder if they have a web site?” Harold mused.
We turned in the opposite direction, crossed over the Esk one last time, passed beneath a second railway bridge and reached the shops of Grosmont. Tosh went into the largest of these to buy liquid and a newspaper while I strolled over to one of the town’s railway stations, this one with the antique Pullmans of the North York Moors Railway, to take some pictures of the trains. While I was doing this the lens cap of my camera went sailing onto the platform and then onto to the trackbed, where I had to leave it.
The rain had almost stopped during this interval but when we left the town it started up again seriously – as we climbed up the steep street beyond the tracks. I was having a lot of trouble seeing because there were drops on one side of my glasses and steam on the other. Eventually I had Harold put them in my daypack for me. This didn’t help my distance vision much but things were pretty straightforward here. We climbed and climbed, heading east on Fair Head Lane, cars whizzing by us at speed. After a cattle grid I began to look for a path to Low Bride Stones, on the moorland to our right. Once we went over from the road to investigate a likely site but even here I couldn’t find a way forward to High Bride Stones, so we had to return to the highway and continue forward. I think I spotted the latter monument on our right eventually and this was important because we were looking for a turnoff over moorland exactly at the spot where the High Bride Stones path reaches the highway. When we got here a homemade sign indicated that the Coast-to-Coast path was still farther ahead along the road. (There was, evidently, some dispute over a right of way at this point). So again we trudged on in the rain. I wasn’t too worried, for I could see a second highway on our left and I knew that if we never found a turnoff we could continue to the junction and make a turn here, but, indeed, a path did appear and so we started off on a trod among the heather over Sleights Moor. Behind us we could see a party of three and I was a little worried that we might be leading them on, well, the appropriate turn of phrase today would be a wild goose chase. But by the time we wound back to the north and reached an escape stile onto the A169 all doubts about the route had been satisfied. Our pursuers were a gentleman and two teenage girls and they were going all the way to Robin Hood’s Bay today so we let them get ahead of us as we began a descent on path and then a track into the valley of Littlebeck.
The view down to Littlebeck
Our views had been improving all the time as we approached this wooden dell and when the rain stopped for a bit we decided, at just past noon, to have our lunch. I actually sat on a stile to eat mine. It contained, as did all the others, a huge roast beef sandwich that I could finish only half before wrapping it up in its foil. We didn’t tarry for long because the rain started up again but we had easy enough walking, a steep decline on roadbed down to the bottom of the valley and the charming hamlet of Littlebeck. It appeared to be especially charming because here the rain stopped for good and patches of sunlight appeared. Tosh was hoping for a coffee shop but I was right in warning her that there were no amenities in this little place. We crossed a stream (which had a depth measuring pole for fording vehicles), rounded a corner, and found a turnoff for a steep climb up the northeast side of Little Beck itself.
Things were still very wet. Moisture dripped from all the trees and perspiration formed inside the rain jackets. We met an old man with his grandson and he chatted a bit about his need to escape city life. After twenty minutes or so we approached a spot he had recommended, a grotto known as The Hermitage. I found the Lees resting on benches inside, but there wasn’t any need to hide from the rain anymore. Our next attraction should have been the Falling Foss, but the closest we got was its parking lot. This was because C-to-C signs always pointed to the upper of two routes and we were driven away from the waterfall itself. By the time we did begin a descent (this was guesswork on my part; signs had ceased) we had bypassed the place; there had been very little water in any of the local streams so perhaps this was not the year to visit the spot anyway. I was a bit confused on how to proceed from a footbridge and while I was trying to figure this out a couple with two Boxers appeared and one of them was so delighted to greet us that he bounded into the air and almost knocked Harold down.
I persevered on a trail I found climbing beside the streambed and was rewarded after a few minutes by the sight of the Lees, in the Mays Beck car park, bent over the counter of a kiosk. No coffee was on offer, although there was a redundant urn, but a lad was selling ice cream cones. He had a limited number of flavors but we all had two scoops (I had toffee vanilla and mint chocolate chip). Tosh had tried to buy a third scoop but the slow boy had only been given the price for a two-scoop cone and didn’t know what to charge her. We ate our ice cream while sitting on a bench, blue skies above us at last. Here I took off my rain jacket. My t-shirt was pretty damp but it dried off in the breezes in the next hour.
After our rest we plodded up the road in the direction of New May Beck Farm, for a while preceded by a flock of sheep. I was now looking for a trail over Sneaton Low Moor and I found it. There were quite a few finger posts about but most of them had nothing to do with our northeasterly trod over heather. Somewhere in this passage we must have reached the high point of a staged ascent that had begun three miles earlier in Littlebeck village.
Our goal was now the B1416 and when we climbed a last stile onto it we turned southeast, using a thin trod in the verge and the roadway itself to continue to our next escape, another heathery path through the Greystone Hills. This was a long traverse, aided by a number of posts in the last of the day’s purple carpet (we were beginning to distinguish two types of heather). Visibility was again outstanding and off to our left we could see the sea and Whitby and its abbey clearly. This was exhilarating walking, made perhaps even more so by my discovery of a five pound note on the trail. It had not been dropped by the Lees – nor had they seen it as they marched by well ahead of me.
Tosh missed a final turnoff and continued forward to an impenetrable fence, but I spotted a stile a short distance down the hill and we used this to leave moorland behind us and enter arable territory once again. The track was not particularly well defined here and we marched on the radishes of a newly harvested field – but it was clear that we were meant to climb a stile and enter into an overgrown path between hedgerows. This wasn’t too pleasant at first, tricky underfoot and menaced by nettles to right and left, but surfaces improved on this descent and a true trackway evolved as we headed north. We were soon on tarmac, taking a right turn to descend to a streambed and then climb up to the be-gnomed Mitten Hill Farm. At a crossroads we took the turnoff for our destination, High Hawsker.
In booking our accommodation I had been told by the old gentleman on the phone that High Farm was on the path, on Back Lane, which we had now reached, and in High Hawsker itself. “Let’s see if any of those things are true,” I told the others. We paused at every possible candidate, none named High Farm, and even reached the A171 without any luck. Here I noticed, however, that Back Lane had another block left to it, so we crossed the highway and continued forward, finding our b&b – the very last house on the lane. We had walked thirteen miles.
Shetland ponies at High Farm
We handed in our boots and retrieved our packs, just arrived at 5:00. The last set of visitors had managed to break the bathtub so there was only a shower on offer. The Lees had no tea bags in their room so I found some in my room and we had a brew-up while sitting on the floor. It was obvious that Carol Crowe’s chief preoccupation was a squad of Shetland ponies in an adjacent field.
She did no evening meals but the Hare and Hounds was just to the north and we asked Carol what time it opened. She didn’t know and when we took a chance on 6:00 we were deeply disappointed. There were other thirsty customers about but the publican insisted on 7:00 every day of the week. Some local women told us there was no pub in Low Hawsker so we retreated to our rooms and read for forty-five minutes and tried again at 7:00. We almost failed in our attempt to get a reservation in the tiny dining room (having to promise to be finished by 8:30) but we did have time for a quick drink before going to our table. The place was very crowded but the service was good. I had an indifferent Whitby Cod and the Lees had time for coffee and then we went outside – the only place where there was seating for us – and had a nightcap of Bailey’s Irish Cream on ice. Kids were playing hide and seek in the car park.
I wanted an early start the next day so we didn’t dawdle, returning home shortly after 9:00 and retiring soon thereafter.
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