Walkhighlands

Days 1 and 2 - Helmsley to Osmotherley
Days 3 and 4 - Osmotherley to Saltburn
Days 5 and 6 - Saltburn to Boggle Hole
Days 7 and 8 - Boggle Hole to Filey

This was not really a day off, because my last day of walking on the coast - or at least to meet the coast - had taken me from the Transporter Bridge out to meet the sea at Redcar, and that was where I had to pick up from, before carrying on with the Cleveland Way from Saltburn.

But at least I got to stay in the same place for two nights, and not have to carry all my stuff about with me, and I had time to take stock of my injuries. My knee was really worst off - generally bruised and a bit swollen and stiff, although not so sore that walking seemed like a bad idea - but my thigh was most spectacular, as I'd fallen on the corner of my camera in my pocket, and had a perfectly right angled bruise (the camera didn't seem to mind, fortunately). In good light I could pick out a shadow of bruising on my right cheek, but I had the reddish brown line of sunburn more often seen on cyclists over both cheekbones anyway, so it wasn't obvious - I was quite glad not to look beaten up.

I did want to get out to the South Gare, as I'd been on the North Gare just over a year earlier, so I decided to do that early on and have the middle of the day free from walking, before heading along to Saltburn for dinner.

So I was on the beach by half past 8, with the point running out beyond a cluster of factory buildings.


I don't really find the windfarm in the sea ugly, just a bit unearthly, especially this morning when everything was grey on grey.


Once on the beach I just kept walking - and walking - I hadn't meant to go this way, but I was following a line of footprints - and pawprints - which hadn't come from Redcar, so there had to be a way out further along. The South Gare was one of those places that I knew you could get to, because other people had been, but that wasn't really an official road or an official path - always a bit confusing for outsiders.


The beach turned out actually to be a very efficient way to get there - just on over the sand until I finally came up on scruffy ground near the tip of the point. It's a busy little place, starting from the lighthouse and masts at the far end.


The far side of the point looks over the mouth of the river to cranes and chimneys and factories on the far side.


Next comes the brick pilot station, and then a little cluster of green huts huddling in a hollow.


The Tees side here has a little harbour - battered looking buildings, but quite busy with little boats. A much bigger boat was making its way out of the river, shepherded by a pilot boat - I always like to see rivers being used.


I was coming out the long way round by the road, past all the buildings of the steelworks, but it wasn't all industrial gloom, because the first bluebells I'd seen that year were growing in the waste ground on the other side of the road.


Where the road meets the edge of the town there's a building which is obviously an old countryside farmhouse, still called Marsh Farm House, but swallowed up by the industrial estate and apparently some kind of scrap yard or storage.


After a bit of a rest I decided to go out to the museum at Kirkleatham - some interesting Saxon stuff, as well as the luxury of a cafe lunch, but also just a nice place to prowl around.


The museum is in a building which was built as a school in the early 18th century, across the road from an earlier almshouse buildings known as Turner's Hospital. There's also a nice church and an impressive stable block and gate from a demolished big house - everything on a grand scale, but the kind of country cluster of buildings which all this area must have been before all the industry spread around the river mouth.


By 4 I was back on the seafront, walking past some of Redcar's colourful artwork.


Further along the front is the lifeboat museum, holding what is apparently the oldest surviving lifeboat in the world.


Eventually the promenade ran out and a path led along past farmland inland to the edge of Marske, where I made a detour up to look at the little museum, although it wasn't open until Easter.


Back on the coast a tiny sandy inlet unexpectedly opened out as I walked past it.


The old church of Marske was down by the coast - rebuilt in 1821 and demolished around 1950, but the tower obviously predates the rebuilding, as there are two clear rooflines on it, and has survived the demolition.


Captain Cook's father is buried here, but I didn't find the grave - I was on a more obscure hunt for the grave of George Heneage Dundas, real life prototype of the fictional friend of Jack Aubrey, which took me a while as although I knew it was a large Zetland family stone, I didn't realise it was a flat one.

The path led on along the top of a low slope, not really a cliff - at first I was outside a field of cows, which was fine, but where the path led right into the next field where the cows were all bouncing about I decided I'd rather not, and made a slightly prickly descent to the beach instead.


I'd walked through four days of constant sunshine to reach the seaside and have it turn grey, but the weather seemed to have repented now. The water was sometimes quite close to the slope, but there was always a way through, until the houses of Saltburn were up above me and I could make my way onto a new promenade, along to the pier.


But I wasn't yet free of the transport confusion curse, because nothing quite went right - I'd hoped since I was in a town that I would find an Italian restaurant as a change from the country pubs, but I hunted around the station and the obvious streets and couldn't see anywhere (I think I just didn't go far enough down the right street, but I didn't know that then). So instead I decided to buy some takeaway pizzza - which was very good - and sat at the top of the shore hill, where it was pretty but cold, to eat it, before nipping down to the Ship, which I'd just toiled up from, for a drink.


It was a lovely night when I came back out, but the toiling back up the hill took just slightly longer than I'd expected, so that I missed the train - the next one was an hour away, and it was still quite a long cold wait for the last bus, which was a bit earlier.


So not a good omen for being bright and rested for the next day and a long walk south!