Day 12 - Littlebeck to Robin Hood's Bay

28 Sept
Distance: 12 miles
Number of people walking on cliffs: 2,327 (approx.)

I awoke this morning with a flea in my ear. Actually, it wasn't a flea. It was a much larger insect with wings, but it was in my ear all the same. I soon fished it out (and without any girly flapping of arms or squealing) but it's not the most pleasant way to have your morning start.

Having been so rudely awoken, I figured that we may as well get going and reach RHB in time for a roast lunch.

Looking at today's route on paper it looks unnecessarily circuitous. We were but a handful of miles from the sea and could have been standing on the cliffs before most people had had their Sunday breakfasts, yet our route was going to take us right around the Wrekin.

We decided that it was a worthwhile circuitous route, so off we set in the direction of Littlebeck Woods, where one of the main attractions is The Hermitage - a hollowed out huge lump of rock with a proper doorway (I'll post a photo next week to illustrate).

We rejoined the C2C route at The Hermitage (having taken a direct route from Intake Farm) and were somewhat surprised to find two people bivvying inside. They were perhaps even more surprised to be woken by two people looking in on them.

Given its state of occupation we didn't have a proper look around but carried on through this magnificent woodland to the next attraction - Falling Foss, a 30 feet high waterfall.

Being too early for the tea-room adjacent to the falls (newly reopened after a 50 year closure) we did a bit of sheep-herding (unintentional) before we set off across moors.

The first stretch of moorland we negotiated without a problem (albeit I did incur my first wet foot of the trip when I went into a bog to above my ankle). On the second stretch we made a bit of a meal of navigating (trusting a misleading C2C sign, rather than paying attention to the map didn't help), but we got to Hawsker in the end, and just beyond the village reached the tea room at one of the big caravan parks.

Here I was met with a quandary. As is the norm on such a trip, I'd been hankering after a fried egg butty with lashings of brown sauce all week and now had my opportunity to indulge, but weighed up with that was the desire for a Sunday lunch in RHB.

I gave in to the egg butty, reasoning that I would be hungry again after 3 more miles of walking, and before long we had joined the hoards walking the cliff path between RHB and Whitby.

Five large groups of ramblers were met and various smaller groups in between and then suddenly into view came our destination.

It's a popular place, heaving with people as we made our way through the streets to the beach, to dip our feet in the sea.

Shunning the Wainwrights Bar (no roast dinners there) we found Ye Dolphin where we have just enjoyed a couple of pints of fine ale washed down with the most enormous lunch.
Soon we shall be off to find a campsite on which to pitch our tent for the next couple of nights and tomorrow we will become tourists in Whitby.

So, there we are. End-to-end and side-to-side completed within a period of 6 months.

And can you believe that we have just walked for 12 days, covering around 180 miles and not a single drop of rain has fallen on us? I bet that there aren't many people who walk for 2 weeks in this country who can make that same claim. We've been very lucky indeed.

Post Script: Even luckier than we thought as it turned out. When we left the pub we found the streets deserted and a light rain falling. I had to laugh at our excellent timing!