Tuesday, 25 June 2013

Cleveland Way , Coastwalk

Scarborough → Robin Hood's Bay

scarborough-huts.png Distance: 14.86 miles
Ascent: 675 metres
Duration: 5 hours 41 minutes

Exe/Tees
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The landscape is really asserting itself now: we are in hill country again. This isn't a big surprise since we're approaching the Exe-Tees line: an imaginary boundary (as I learnt in secondary school geography) that roughly separates upland and lowland Britain.

north-bay.pngLeaving Scarborough's North Bay we passed colourful beach-huts, a derelict cable car and a busy-looking aquarium before reaching the cliffs again.

Further on we passed another imaginary point, and I'm disappointed that we didn't stop to look for it. The Ordnance Survey's National Grid is the basis of all OS maps. A Grid Reference is a simple way of referring to a point in the UK; conventionally it starts with two letters (which identify the 100x100km square in which the reference lies), followed by an even number of digits. Almost all grid references in the UK begin with one of four letters: H, N, S and T. Today we crossed the line that separates the H and N grid references from the S and T ones. In fact, over the course of ten minutes we were in the T 500km grid square, then S and finally N. This doesn't happen anywhere else. (Sadly we have no photographic evidence of this moment.)

More exciting than that is the fact that a tiny spot of land at the base Beast Cliff just south of Ravenscar has the distinction of being the only place in the UK with a grid reference that doesn't start with one of those letters. OV 000000, we came so close to you but failed to pay you a visit. I'm sorry.

As for the path, it's been a good day but we've not really felt "into" the walk. Maybe that's what comes of walking straight after a festival.

robin-hoods-bay.pngHighlights were the quiet hamlet of Ravenscar, a would-be holiday resort that never was, and the tight-knitted streets of old Robin Hood's Bay.

The landscape and Robin Hood's Bay itself both felt very reminiscent of the Cornish coastline that we've come to love over recent years, at the other end of the Exe-Tees line.

Posted by pab at 18:49 | Comments will be back one day. Please email me instead!