Yorkshire Wolds Way

Ganton → Filey

Distance: 11.42 miles
Ascent: 378 metres
Duration: 3 hours 21 minutes

Sprint to the sea
« Not walked | Scarborough »

We had intended today to be far more leisurely. Instead we got up early and raced to Filey, frequent glimpses of the sea drawing us forwards.

Despite the pace we had time to appreciate our final walk through a deep Wold, at Stocking Dale, where the trail is overhung by hawthorns and scrubby birches, and filled with the sounds of skylarks and songbirds. Once the path rose again to follow field edges, it felt like we'd reached the end of the rolling terrain that we'd become accustomed to. Instead of a sudden change, the landscape gently evened out into flat fields, with increasing numbers of houses. By the time we reached Muston it felt like we'd left a week's worth of pastoral wilderness behind us.

The plan to catch a late afternoon train home was scuppered by Northern Railway massively reducing their services today due to industrial action by the RMT. That left us with twelve miles to cover before the one and only train at 1230; a tall order, but just about achievable. In the end, we found we'd covered the distance at 3.3mph – too fast to really appreciate the scenery.

Since leaving Hessle we've passed sturdy acorn distance markers every five miles measuring the distance from each end of the trail. These seem to be a unique feature of the Yorkshire Wolds Way, but I'd love to see them adopted by other National Trails — they provide a reassuring rhythm to the walk and an encouragement of progress being made, counting down to the finish line.

We reached Filey with almost an hour to spare; sufficient time to drop to the prom where we linked this walk with our coastwalk but not quite enough to make it to the formal end of the trail and back. (Good job we walked that stretch back in 2013 then.) The Yorkshire Wolds Way ends where the Cleveland Way begins, on the top of Filey Brigg. In a way we've come full circle this week.

So that's National Trail number twelve complete. Depending on how you count, just two or three more to go, and we're already over half-way through the longest of those.