East Heslerton to Filey Brigg

General Election Day! We spent it most profitably in walking very nearly to the end of the delightful Yorkshire Wolds way; having, I hasten to add, taken our public duties appropriately seriously and cast our postal votes before leaving home. The Yorkshire Wolds stretch almost to Filey, so we were walking through typical dry valleys to within five miles of the end of the path, and for the final stretch we had good views to the Bempton Cliffs, where the chalk that we had been walking over for the past few days outcrops at the coast.

I'm getting ahead of myself. Elizabeth Lumley at Manor Farm House very kindly provided breakfast for both Claire and us at 7.30am (this doesn't usually start until 8am) and she also gave us poached eggs on toast with mushrooms, as a change from the 'full English' breakfast, the usual fare offered to long distance walkers (which we like when we are walking, but after a few days gets a bit repetitive). We left around 8.30am and climbed up back up the ridge, back to the Yorkshire Wolds Way at the top.

We turned left and continued along the ridge, descending and ascending in a couple of dog-legs. The views were good and we were passing through attractive farmland, but one of the 5-mile markers indicating that we still had 19 miles to go was a bit depressing (and not correct, I think). In my rush to make progress, I missed a footpath running alongside a minor road; thankfully Richard spotted it. We descended towards Sherburn, passing some horse-riders, then cut across to another minor road, with a man sweeping the road in preparation for road works. We turned right and climbed again, then took a path that supposedly went through woodland. The woodland had been felled! We were getting warm, so stopped to remove a layer of clothing.

We followed along the ridge, then descended and ascended again, with the busy A64 (carrying traffic from York to Scarborough) visible beneath us. We eventually emerged onto a road opposite the Victorian Ganton Hall, described in the guidebook as like a French chateau, which I don’t get. We turned left towards Ganton, turning right just before the village hall (a polling station) and walking towards and past the attractive Church. We turned right and climbed up a sunken lane, through an avenue of gnarled old trees.

We were now walking at the top of the ridge (Binnington Brow then Willerby Brow) and there were good views to the coast. We crossed the B1249 and took a track past Staxton Wold Farm, leading towards RAF Staxton Wold and High Farm; a car passed us, heading in the opposite direction and driving rather too fast. We turned right past the RAF Station, a “remote radar head” and continued downhill past Hill Farm (a pig farm) on a sunken lane.

We turned left and climbed steeply, up above Cotton Dale. We stopped for lunch, unusually (there are conveniently places benches on most of the route, but not in this section) sitting on our own waterproofs on the ground. The guidebook describes the next section as “wonderful but demanding”; it was indeed lovely, and it is true that the route descends then climbs, then descends and climbs again, as it cuts across two spurs of Lang Dale. However, the walking was perfectly manageable. From about a mile back we could see a group of people close to our second climb out of the Dale; we couldn’t initially work out what they were doing, then we saw a model glider. Round and round it flew; a bit boring really (a smaller model plane took off a couple of times but on each occasion crashed almost immediately). We also passed Humble Bee Farm with its “wigwams”; I think this is “glamping”.

We turned right onto a minor road, and said hello to a couple of cyclists, then turned left onto a path into Raven Dale. We descended first gently and then more steeply alongside a ploughed field, and we’d expected to have to climb up to the end of the dale before turning right into Camp Dale, but in fact the path was signed across the field close to its lowest point. We continued along Camp Dale, alongside fields of oilseed rape, and we were very pleased to reach one of the “5 mile markers” (their separation was getting rather erratic!) telling us that we only had 7 miles to go; we were also pleased that there was a bench next to the marker, and we stopped for a rest (though a cup of tea would have been nice…).

We reached “The Camp”, at the junction of Camp Dale and Stocking Dale, and apparently the site of another deserted medieval village, though there was nothing to see of it. Of more obvious note was the fact that it was here that we parted company with the Centenary Way, which had shared our route since shortly after Thixendale yesterday. The Centenary Way also goes to Filey, but via a more southerly route through Hunmanby. We meanwhile turned left and walked through Stocking Dale, a delightful wooded dale that was – I think – our final dale of the walk.

We emerged from the dale at a wooded Earthwork and took a track past Stockendale Farm and, across the road, past Muston Wold Farm. Someone had left a line of rotting straw alongside the track, so it was not the most pleasant section of the route, but good views were opening up to Scarborough to the left and the chalk cliffs to the south of Filey to the right. We took a path across fields to Muston.

Muston is an attractive enough village, but the route just follows the road through it and the section of path from Muston to Filey (across a field, then across a busy road, then alongside a school playing field) was not wonderfully exciting – but we were almost there! We passed Filey station and continued along Station Avenue towards the sea. We turned right onto West Avenue then left into Rutland Street, passing The Forge Guest House where we were staying, but keeping on because we were so close to the coast. We reached the Royal Crescent, with views down to Coble Landing, the beach and Filey Brigg. We took photographs then returned to The Forge, where Sarah welcomed us warmly and gave us cake! In the evening we celebrated with a lovely meal at Pizzeria Bella Italia.

So that was that; well, almost. The Yorkshire Wolds Way actually ends a mile or so north of Filey at Filey Brigg, a narrow peninsula of boulder clay cliffs, underlain by calcareous sandstone which protrudes further out to sea. Well, almost; pedantically the cliffs are Carr Naze, and only the platform of calcareous sandstone, which is covered at high tide, is the Brigg. After a good night’s sleep and an excellent breakfast at The Forge Guest House (with Richard - who hates orange marmalade - discovering that he particularly enjoyed Andrew's four fruit marmalade), we walked through the Country Park and out to the marker which marks the end (or beginning) of the Yorkshire Wolds Way and the beginning (or end) of the Cleveland Way. A passing woman very kindly took a photograph of the two of us together. Then we walked right to the end of Carr Naze, where there were excellent views of the Brigg. To get to the end of Carr Naze we had already passed the signs telling us not to go any further, and the route down to the Brigg looked too much of a scramble, so we turned round and retraced our steps. We stopped for a cup of coffee at the café in the Country Park. There is a book here that you can sign after completing either the Yorkshire Wolds Way or the Cleveland Way. We signed to say we’d done the Wolds Way and found our entry from 2008 when we were here at the end of the Cleveland Way.

We walked back into Filey, had lunch at the delightfully old-fashioned Bramwell’s Tea Room, then went down onto the beach. Hang gliders appeared above us, despite the reappearance of the mist that had lifted slightly since the morning; my usual end of walk paddle was limited to a walk along the beach – in my walking boots – close to the water’s edge.

We travelled home from Filey by way of Seamer, York, Peterborough and Ely. The mainline train at York was in the station when we arrived, but then held to await the arrival of a late-running train from Scotland. It then got later and later so we missed our connection in Peterborough; however we still caught the train we had planned to catch from Ely, so all was well in the end. It had been a lovely holiday.