August 2, 2019: Hayburn Wyke to Scarborough
We rejoin the Cleveland Way near Scalby Ness.
Breakfast rituals rarely varied on this trip – with Gavan ordering the full English and I remaining content with scrambled eggs on toast. As we were settling our bill the woman in charge could not find a copy of the receipt for the deposit I had paid via credit card when I had called here back in March. I had, indeed, never received an acknowledgement of this transaction from the inn so I was prepared for this moment. I reached into a pocket and produced my Visa statement with the clearly recorded evidence that the Hayburn Wyke Inn had received a £35 deposit from me. “My,” the woman said, “you really are organized.” “You can say that again,” Gavan added. Parenthetically I had not been worried that we would find no room here because Gavan was in the habit of calling ahead to each of our places of accommodation to remind them of our need for twin beds and to alert them that Sherpa would be delivering our bags.
Unusually we had full sunshine from the outset today and we now left at 9:35, soon finding our way back to the Cinder Track and continuing our southerly journey. Walking was again easy and soon the tribe of cyclists began to appear, fore and aft, to keep us company. There seemed to be much more housing on the horizon as we passed the village of Cloughton on our right. After an hour or so we reached a highway, one with a crossing that featured an electronic green bicycle when it was time to move forward. Here, in the precincts of Burniston, Gavan suggested we might leave the Cinder Track.
He had discovered that the highway, heading off in a southeasterly direction, provided a shorter alternative than the Cinder Track, which was heading due south into the northern outskirts of Scarborough. More importantly he had discovered that the A165 had a walkway for pedestrians and we would not have to share the roadbed with hurtling vehicles. So we said goodbye to the Cinder Track and began a mile-long stretch on the highway, first on one side, then the other.
I have to say that this was a rather unpleasant section. The sun was shining down on us, there was little shade, and the path was often overgrown or littered with broken glass and other debris. Eventually Gavan indicated that he had found a track that would lead us directly back to the seacoast. I wanted a rest in some shady spot but we could not agree on where this might take place and so we continued on the track, accompanied by a huge field of dried oilseed rape on our right. There was no shade when we reached the coast at Scalby Ness Sands but soon we found a bench and, cooled by some nice sea breezes, we sat down and lathered up with sun block. We were back on the Cleveland Way.
We made our way forward over Long Nab and, accompanied by Scalby Beck, we soon descended to the Northern Sands – finding almost immediately that the Old Scalby Mills pub was on our right and that it was playing host to a mob of vacationers frying themselves out in the sun. We took a table inside and had our pints – though we hoped to make it into Scarborough itself before ordering any lunch.
Better than life-size sculpture of Freddie Gilroy facing Scarborough’s Northern Sands.
To reach Scarborough we took to the promenade overlooking the Northern Sands, getting ever closer to a large headland that we would circle soon. We were now in the heart of sun-seeking Britain and there was a great deal of activity down on the sands on our left. Also of consider interest was a giant-sized bronze statue of a local hero, Freddie Gilroy. He was perched on a giant bench and I had Gavan climb up onto its surface, his legs dangling like a toddler, before taking a picture. Gilroy had been among those British soldiers given the task of liberating Belsen in the final stages of World War II. (This was also true of Dorothy’s cousin Bernard, who – at a reunion on this site a few years ago, met the Queen.)
A promenade also provided easy walking around the headland – whose cliff facades were populated by hundreds of nesting birds. At last we pulled around the corner and headed into the heart of the beachside scene of Scarborough itself. Amusement arcades, fudge and ice cream kiosks – all the usual seaside fare lined both sides of the street as we neared the Old Harbor and began to look for a place of refreshment. The roadway and its pavements were both crowded with people, families and lots of kids, drunks, people with dogs – you have to admit that this was hardly a representative stretch of what we usually think of as a National Trail, and, not surprisingly, Cleveland Way signs had all but disappeared.
We entered a pub called Ivy at the Sea; it had a quiet dining room and we ordered pints of Peroni and sandwiches – I had the prawn in Marie Rose sauce version. The girls who waited on us seemed amused by the cap I now wore, the one with a back flap to keep sun off the nape of my neck. This choice of headgear, which reminded some of Lawrence of Arabia and others of a Japanese sniper on Guadalcanal, always embarrassed Gavan – who would often ask me to take it off in polite company. The girls took photos of us at our table – from one of these I can see that I was still wearing the protective sleeve on my left arm. (It meant I had only one arm that needed any sun-block.)
I can add that a month or so after our lunch here a new comedy series called Scarborough was launched on BBC 1. I found myself reviewing local scenes Gavan and I had just experienced but my jaw dropped when I witnessed a segment of the show that had obviously been filmed in the Ivy itself – only a table or two from where we had enjoyed our lunch. You could even see the Peroni pump at the end of the counter!
Panoramic view of Scarborough.
After leaving the Ivy we had each downed an ice cream cone as we marched to the foot of a Victorian-era tram the girls had told us about – it would take us to the upper level of the town and here we could continue on in search of our night’s accommodation. Much of the upper town and almost all of the southern part of Scarborough is devoted to large hotels and after crossing a bridge and climbing still higher we located ours, the Esplanade. It was shortly before 4:00 and we had walked nine miles today.
The hotel we full of ancient coach parties and the old ladies were mightily confused by the lifts – one of which soon took us to the fourth floor. Our room had a great retrospective view of Scarborough itself but it did not have access to wi-fi. This was available in one of the handsome lounges downstairs and while I had a clean-up Gavan went down to it with his phone. I joined him and had a gin and tonic.
When it was dinnertime he did some research on the phone and discovered that there was Tex-Mex restaurant nearby, El Gringos, so we wandered over here and had a nice meal. We each had a margarita, shared some nachos, and then I had the chili con carne. There was, in fact, just too much food – or too many beans since these dominated the chili and topped some rice as well. I couldn’t finish.
Shadows were beginning to gather as we headed back to our hotel, following a drunken party of young men on a stag night. Much of the town below was illuminated and this made for another enchanting view from our window as we prepared for bed on the eve of our walk’s last day.
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