Windle
Über Member
- Location
- Burnthouses
I have just been for a mini-break to Scarborough with a friend.
On Monday we caught the bus to Whitby. I got chatting to a local man in his early 60s who had overheard me saying that I was enjoying getting free bus rides now. He wanted to know when he would get his bus pass. He had a dry sense of humour and a distinctive voice.
We said goodbye to our fellow passenger and had a stroll round Whitby then a snack and coffee in a cafe there. Then we headed off up the steep steps towards the abbey. We had decided to walk the Cleveland Way from Whitby to Robin Hood's Bay and catch the bus back from there. It is not a super-long walk - about 11 km (7 miles) but there is a fair amount of climbing and descending along the tops of the cliffs. Let's call it 'moderate' in difficulty. Anybody with reasonable fitness and mobility could do it, but you would know that you had done a decent walk by the end of it.
There is quite a lot of coastal erosion going on. The path gets close to the cliff edge in many places. It was a bit alarming in one section to see that the ground had disappeared from below the fence keeping us from the cliff edge with the now redundant fence stretched over a gaping void! Unfortunately, I neglected to take a picture of that.
I did take a few elsewhere though...
I don't know if the foghorn and lighthouse are still used today - I imagine that all shipping uses GPS so they should be redundant? I wouldn't like to be anywhere near that foghorn when it sounded - instant deafness!
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One of the many little steep dips that we descended into and then had to climb back up from...
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Robin Hood's Bay with the tide out. They are currently busy building up the sea defences down there.
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I was thinking to myself that calling a village in Robin Hood's Bay "Robin Hood's Bay" was a bit odd! When we got to the village I saw a tourist sign that said that many locals call it Bay Town.
We went down a VERY steep lane to the beautiful older part of the village. I reckon that the road must be very close to 30% in gradient. I don't think that I would even attempt to cycle up it these days! As usual, the photo doesn't give a true indication of how steep the road actually is...
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We had time to kill until our bus came so we went for coffee and very yummy ice cream.
After that, a nice bus journey back to Scarborough.
We were coming back yesterday but decided not to rush home when we saw what a nice day it was turning out to be so we headed off down the South Bay for a look around...
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We called in at another busy cafe and I heard a very distinctive voice cutting through the chit-chat - I was sure that it was our fellow bus passenger from Monday... I scanned the room and spotted him! I went and said hello and he accused me of stalking him. Jokingly... He asked if we had enjoyed our walk the previous day. We told him that we had and asked how his day had gone. He said that he really likes Whitby so he'd had a nice day too. Now looking forward to getting his bus pass and being able to do the journeys free.
PS I didn't have any walking boots before going away and didn't want to tackle the potentially muddy (it was, in places) and slippery (it was, in places) Cleveland Way path in trainers so I had been looking at walking boots on Amazon. It soon became obvious that all of the boots under £100 got mixed reviews, and even some of the ones costing a lot more than that. I am a frugal pensioner and I don't do that much walking so I definitely didn't want to spend £80-£100+ on boots that might disappoint. Then I went to my local Aldi and spotted some very cheap 'trekking boots'. They were only £17.99 and looked pretty well made. I'm sure that they will not last anywhere near as long as quality boots, will not be properly waterproof and so on, but for that price and my modest requirements I decided that I would give them a go...
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Verdict? So far - pleasantly surprised! They fit my feet well. I was worried that the cheap soles might slip at the first sign of damp/muddy stone, but no scares yet. If they last 6 months then I will feel like I have got my money's worth out of them. Anything over a year and I would be laughing! If you like the sound of them, dash down to Aldi before they sell out.
I remember that foghorn ~ when I was young (early seventies) we used to holiday in a tiny caravan in somebodies garden, just along from Ruswarp station. Ideal for getting the train (class 101 units) into Whitby. The sound of that was a frequent occurrence, day & night, whenever it was foggy out at sea. I don't think we ever had a stay there when it wasn't droning away some of the time. The atmosphere of the place wouldn't have been the same without it.
