Posted by: natsevs | November 12, 2010

Seaton Carew to Scarborough

I was up early again as everyone had to get to school and was over at grans for breakfast. I was dropped back off at Seaton Carew around half 9 and walked the promenade through the town coming out along the road. It was a long road to make my way down towards Middlesbrough and it started raining quite heavily. After passing a landfill site and some industry there was a reserve either side of the road for a bit but then the industry popped up again and I was back to the rather unpleasant walking. As I reached the Transporter Bridge the sun came out and I got straight on to be taken over to Middlesbrough proper. On the other side the Teesdale way went along the road to the Riverside stadium then around the side of that by the side of the railway. I made my way through road works on a closed road then over a rail bridge to get onto a path right alongside the tracks. I was on that for ages through steelworks and all sorts of lovely scenery. It stunk at times and there were pipes running by my side most of the way.

Finally I got away from the railway and onto a short road out to Redcar sea front where I had to jump a fair few puddles. I nipped into Pacittos for a strawberry top ice cream as I made my way along the sea front. I should have gone for a lemon one. Out of Redcar I went down onto the beach to walk to Saltburn which was a much nicer walk than earlier in the day. Once I had reached Saltburn the Cleveland way took me up a steep slope out of there to walk the cliff top to Skiningrove. I got down to there at around 5 and waited to be picked up. Unfortunately there was no signal down there and I didn’t know if Lisa had got my message. I was also supposed to have a radio interview in a while so it was pretty inconvenient. I ended up having to head inland and uphill to get signal but was rang by a paper and missed the interview anyway. Lisa arrived soon after as I was stressing out about having to do more than just walk every day. I was grateful to get back to the house and relax for my last night there.

I packed up in the morning then went through the same routine as the last few days then headed over to Skiningrove. I waited there with grandad and my uncle Colin for my uncle Paul to arrive as he was going to walk with me that day. Paul and Sue got there around half 10 and I said my byes and hellos then me and Paul set off up the slope out of Skiningrove. We made our way along the top before going in slightly and further up with quarries below, between us and the sea. It was a really sunny day and the scenery was great as well. At Boulby the path headed down to Staithes, a pretty little cove village. The climb out was another steep one then we continued along the cliffs was more until Runswick bay. We came down into there then up again on the steepest and longest climb of the day. Thankfully, it was also the last. There were more quarries below us again as we headed for Sandsend. Once down to there we took to the beach over to Whitby as the tide was on its way out. It clouded over on the way to Whitby but the rain held off and we got there at around 5. We went up to where the whale bone and the Captain Cook statue is and stopped whilst I had the radio interview I had missed the previous day. After that we went down for an ice cream and met with Sue before getting fish and chips. After tea we headed back to Paul and Sue’s in Scarborough where I was staying for a few days.

 

The next day I had a day off mainly because I hadn’t been to Scarborough for almost 10 years after coming up a lot when I was younger to visit my grandparents. I was also having lunch with my Paul, Sue and a very generous man called Mr R, the R stands for something but he didn’t want any mentions. My uncle and auntie are taxi drivers and so had told a lot of people about the walk and many of them had donated money for the charities. Mr R had told my uncle that when I got halfway he would donate £500, so the lunch was an opportunity to receive the cheque and say a massive thank you. In the morning I went around Scarborough seeing all the places I remembered like the Harbour Bar and saw where my grandparents bench is. Sue’s mum also joined us for the lunch which was very nice then in the afternoon I went into the Scarborough studio of Radio York for an interview. I have never been in a studio before so it was quite odd, especially as the presenter was in York still. After that the rest of the afternoon was spent relaxing.

The next day Sue dropped me and Paul at Whitby and off we went. We walked through town before starting the climb out back to the cliffs. The path took us through a campsite then along with quite a few dips but thankfully it wasn’t too hot a day. There was a nice lighthouse between there and Robin Hoods Bay, just before getting to the bay there was also a rocket pole. I couldn’t resist the temptation to try and climb that so up I went. We went down into the bay and onto the sea wall at first before getting onto the beach. There were school parties everywhere down there, but we were soon leaving them behind as we went to go up at Boggle Hole. Paul thought there was a way up further on but wasn’t sure so we didn’t risk it. It was really steep, and on the way up there were 2 guys carrying massive sacks of cockles or something up, looking absolutely knackered. I asked one of them how long he’d been doing it and he said 20 years, it didn’t look like it got an easier with time. We were on the top for a short while before we had to come down again to beach level and back up so Paul had been right after all. So we had another climb up and were basically climbing all the way to Ravenscar at varying inclinations. At Ravenscar we went to some tea rooms for lunch and a guy I had never met shook my hand and congratulated me. I was a little shocked before it dawned on me that it was a guy my uncle had talked to whilst doing practice walks up there and told me about.

After lunch, we were back on the cliff with lots of dips to get up and down. The weather started taking a turn for the worse as storm clouds and thunder started surrounding us on all 3 landward sides. As Scarborough castle came into view it was underneath a big black cloud with the odd bit of lightning biting down on it. I spent a lot of the time between then and finishing trying to get a photo of lightning but only succeeded once. Somehow the rain didn’t get to us as we plodded onwards along the top, up and down and in and out. We only started getting rained on as we went down into North Bay at Scarborough. Sue picked us up and we drove to meet some friends of theirs before getting a Chinese take away for tea.

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