Wolds Way Day 6

Ganton - Filey

The week’s effort was telling on me on the final morning.  My knees were stiff, my feet sore and, despite a good night’s sleep, I felt tired.  Still, there was only one day to go, 20km remaining between me and the end.  The weather wasn’t looking good but there was no option now but to press on.  Jill dropped us at Ganton and we set off – again the lads set a cracking pace and I lagged behind.  It was dry but the weather was threatening so we were soon in all our wet weather gear.  It made us a little warm and sticky as we (or least I) puffed up the initial climb but the light rain that came in justified putting it on.  Like the previous day a lot of the paths were along field boundaries and were heavily overgrown.  The cow parsley doused us and spotted our overtrousers with tiny white petals.  The views were severely limited and the radio mast at RAF Staxton came and went in and out of the cloud.  The base was eerily quiet, nothing to disturb the silence.  A board said that the terrorist threat status was ‘heightened’.  They might have been waiting for someone to say ‘boo’.

My guidebook described this section as ‘demanding’.  It was correct, as the path dropped down and climbed up endless small valleys.  At the top of one climb we caught up with Dave and Sue, as was becoming traditional, and they told us in what ways the Ganton Greyhound had failed to live up to their expectations (packed lunches, primarily).  We trudged on in heavy rain.  Around Camp Dale the path clings to the top of a valley, following the edge of an oilseed rape field.  It wasn’t much of a path and was canted down to the right, making for awkward going, especially for Pete’s dodgy ankle.  At another of the poetry benches, next to a five-mile marker, we took the chance of a break.  The poem talked about seeing a church spire but in the mist and dreich it was impossible to spot anything beyond the immediate vicinity.

A slight change of terrain followed as we swung north again through a valley bottom full of wildflowers, shrubs and trees.  From here reasonably broad and solid paths took us towards Muston.  The weather was improving now, after the severe drenching in the middle part of the day, and we started to take some of the gear off.

In the distant murk I saw a grey mass that could only be the North Sea and started to feel excited.  The last time I had seen the water was in the Humber estuary.  The goal was in sight.  I also started to feel emotional at the thought of the imminent achievement of my aims, and the help and the company I had had, the good times on the way.  Soon we were in a quiet Filey, walking the streets in the chilly air.  Along the front were the usual sights of the English seaside – fish and chip bars, crazy golf (no one playing), a fairground with an empty carousel turning around.  Bempton Cliffs and Flamborough Head loomed darkly across the bay as wind-surfers made the most of the weather.

By the toilets at the north end of the town we spotted a Wolds Way sign, but it was pointing back the way we had come.  A chap followed us into the Gents to ask if we needed directions.  I thanked him but said no.  On the opposite side of the road a sign pointed upwards to the Brigg country park and also the Wolds Way.  We climbed to find ourselves in a big field.  I was looking for a visitors centre here so we made tracks for a building in the distance.  Swallows were flying all over the field, a few inches above the cut grass, twisting and turning around us.

The building turned out to be the campsite reception.  There was no sign of the carved stone to match the one by the Humber.  Handily, however, there was an information board which showed the Wolds Way carrying on towards the Brigg and there was an image of a trig-like monolith there.  We headed that way.

As we approached I could see the stone but there were other people hanging around there too.  ‘We’ll have to barge them out of the way,’ I suggested.  When we arrived we found that they had a right to be there too: they were greeting a group of blokes who were just finishing the Cleveland Way.  What timing.  The family group had banners, streamers, a finish line ribbon for the walkers to breast.  We shuffled around the carved stone as best we could, while Rick positioned me carefully so the photos would exclude the other group.  There was no sign of Jill.  It felt like a fitting end: unshowy, low-key, a bit farcical but also private, personal, silently acknowledged.

I called Jill to find she was in the Tourist Information café in town (there was no visitors centre at the country park, I had misread the guidebook), so we walked back down.  The woman behind the counter in the café recommended a particular fish and chip restaurant to us, but a bloke outside told us it wouldn’t be open and suggested another one up the road, John and Ginny’s.  This was indeed open and, if the batter needed a little more draining, it was all cooked freshly and was very hot and tasty.  That had been my promised reward for completing the journey and I ate it happily, looking forward to having a bit of a rest.

Wolds Way Day 5

Settrington Beacon - Ganton

As the forecast had predicted, it was raining first thing.  It must have rained hard in the night too as the roads were covered in big puddles and the dried-up beck that ran along the front of the beer garden was now full to the brim.  All the same, the forecast had improved overnight and they were now saying that it would stop raining late morning and be good for the rest of the day.  Good news.

On cue, the rain stopped and we set off at 10:45.  The lads, fresh and eager, were a little quick off the mark for me, with four days’ walking in my legs, and I lagged behind a little.  Despite the grey sky it soon warmed up.  On the outskirts of Winteringham we found Dave and Sue sitting by a pond.  They told us tales of woe at the Middleton Arms in North Grimston (poor food, poor beer, poor rooms).

Beyond the village a pleasant climb through woods took a serious turn.  A signpost, jutting skywards, warned of a ‘steep gradient’.  It wasn’t kidding.  My calves were twanging at the effort and the path was partly made up of chalky scree, which didn’t make the going any easier.  The reward at the top was one of the many pieces of art: an arrangement of red wooden poles around a gravelly area and a small pond, next to which were some whitewashed standing figures.  I don’t know what it all meant, but I liked it.

We were now on the edge of the northern escarpment, giving views over the Vale of Pickering up to the North York Moors.  The views were rather hazy for us though.  The path took us alongside many fields and a lot of the time it was rather overgrown with grass and cow parsley, the flower heads of which were holding a lot of water.  This water was readily transferred onto our clothing.  Ahead of us, along a lane, a number of hares were running around.  One started towards us, saw we were there, hesitated, then decided it probably ought to run the other way.

Our route wound up and down the hills’ edge, seemingly arbitrarily adding to the distance and giving us more climbing to do.  As the weather was good, we pushed on past Sherburn towards Ganton.  Jill texted to say the pub was shut but she would wait there to meet us.  Ganton is the location of a fairly posh golf club – old-fashioned, hard to get into – but around the path above the village someone had set up a more accessible nine hold course.  In extreme contrast to the main course, this one was intermingled with a pig farm, lending a rather pungent quality to the air.  It was a bit of a slog getting through this section.

Given that the Ganton Greyhound was shut, we drove to Sherburn to find the East Riding open and serving a nice pint of pale ale.  Jill wanted some money and, after a couple of pints, Rick suggested we go to Malton, where he grew up.  It’s a pretty town full of pale stone buildings.  The market square has an attractive old church in its centre and there is still, for the time being, a livestock market nearby.  We called in at the Spotted Cow on the edge of this market for a quick pint.  Rick used to play darts there, he told us.  It was dark inside, and atmospheric, and served a decent pint.

That evening was the last overnight stay and I celebrated by having a very good sticky toffee pudding in the Star.  And a few pints.

Wolds Way Day 4

Huggate - Settrington Beacon

The chef popped out during breakfast to deliver my packed lunch.  ‘Did you have the poached egg?’ she asked.  We didn’t.  ‘It was Dan’s first go at cooking one.  I asked him how he found out how to do it.  He said he Googled it.’

The original plan for the day had been to meet at the Middleton Arms in North Grimston but the pub wasn’t going to be open so we had to re-plan.  Instead we would meet in Wharram le Street and decide what to do from there.  The day was forecast to be warm and sunny while the next day would be heavy rain so it would be better not to leave too much for the following day.

Open fields and lanes, over which a kestrel hovered, unbothered by me, took me easily to Fridaythorpe.  A house on the edge of the village bore a blue plaque informing passers-by that therein dwelt ‘Lance Moxon, the first person in the Wolds to start collecting antique washing machines.’  Clearly it was a special place now that almost everyone in the Wolds collects antique washing machines.  Presumably.

I’d never thought much about Fridaythorpe – an unprepossessing place with a main road hammering through it – but the area around a pretty pond was very pleasant.  Fish swum in the open water and swallows swooped down to drink from it – having only recently emerged from its depths after their over-winter slumbers at the bottom, if you believe the old tales.  I took a diversion to the attractive church, which fortified me for the route round the distinctly industrial animal feed plant at the end of the lane.  It was soon past and I was into beautiful dales again where curlews called with their electronic phone sounds.  At the foot of Worm Dale is a piece of land art, Time and Flow, a swirl of banked up earth.  Unfortunately the tops of the banks were covered in long grass which rather spoiled the effect.  Less disappointing was the next in the series of poetry benches which described walking down the valleys as moving ‘in the ghost of water.’  Thixendale, the village, looked very pretty.  I couldn’t see Dave and Sue at the Cross Keys and resisted the lure of peanut butter cookies for sale outside someone’s house, so I didn’t stop.  Instead I found a sunny hillside to sit back amongst the wildflowers – mainly daisies, buttercups and thistles, but also on closer inspection many tiny flowers whose names were and are beyond me – and to admire the views.

Further on, a couple coming the other way asked where they would get to if they kept walking.  ‘Erm, the west coast,’ I suggested, before pointing out Thixendale on the map.  They had come from Wharram Percy, the abandoned mediaeval village, which was where I was heading next.  The grey ruins of the church of St Martin’s stood out at the bottom of the valley and hurried my steps.  There was no one around as I arrived and stood watching swallows drinking from the pond in front of the church.  It was all tranquil and calm.  The place didn’t immediately have the effect I had imagined, some kind of rush of antiquity.  The church was in use for a couple more centuries after the village was deserted and so seems rather more modern.  The bulk of the old houses are slightly further up the hillside and are covered in grassland, making them little more than ripples in the ground.  Nevertheless, as I walked around and read the information boards, my imagination slowly sparked into life and by the time I walked out, my head was swimming with fantasies of what it would be like to have lived there five centuries ago.

The official Wolds Way route climbs up to the road to get to Wharram le Street but I had read that Wharram Quarry was now a nature reserve, famed for orchids and butterflies, and so I took a diversion that way.  It seemed unpromising at first as the path followed the old quarry trackbed past signs telling you to keep out.  I hit the road and assumed that there was no public access until, happily, I discovered the actual entrance.  The quarry was a wide open space covered in scrubby plants and flowers.  I dodged the nettles at the gate and wondered how I was supposed to approach it.  The board promised bee orchids somewhere amongst all the tiny plants spread out in the acres of green.  Without much hope, I plodded a kind of circuit of the area.  Near the entrance I found early purple orchids still not fully in flower but that was it for orchids until right near the end when I spotted some yellow things.  These turned out to be common twayblade.  Not a bee orchid, but a new one for my list anyway.

As arranged, Jill was at Wharram le Street.  I was a little ahead of schedule and given the forecast I thought it was a good idea if I could knock off a few extra miles while the weather was good.  We re-arranged to meet at Settrington Beacon, another 4km along the route.  It would make the wet day a little shorter.  Good paths led me along fields and through a sheepfarm.  Mostly the land had been devoted to crops with few livestock areas.  Walking through a sheepfarm made it feel more like the Peak District.  There were some fallow fields higher up, overgrown with campion.  Here I saw a hare, staring at me from the undergrowth with one dark eye.  When I raised my camera it padded heavily and quickly up the track and away.  Passing a field of oilseed rape I startled a hen pheasant who was followed by a stripey, peeping chick.  In the woods other pheasants gave off cries like old-fashioned car horns.  Near the end of my route for the day I was met by Jill coming down to meet me, which was a welcome surprise.

The Star at Weaverthorpe, our accommodation for the next two nights, wasn’t open but as we walked up to the back door we were greeted by a cheery hello from an upstairs window.  The little girl who saluted us was quickly joined by her mother, Ali, who jogged down to let us in.  Things were fairly free and easy, and Ali was happy to let us have a drink in the beer garden at the front before we rushed up to our rooms.  While still having our drinks we were joined by Rick, who was accompanying me on the final two days, and Tracy, who is local at was setting up a ‘glamping’ site in the village (see yorkshire-wolds.org.uk.  They were both paint-spattered from decorating the interiors of some camping ‘pods’.

We went our separate ways to get scrubbed up for dinner – Tracy would be re-joining us later – and met up again in the bar.  One of the signature meals was the pizza – about a metre long oval of thin, crispy base covered in lovely toppings.  I had the ‘Godfather’ (lots of meat), though I had been tempted by the ‘Jambo’ (named after one of the pub dogs, a Great Dane).  Pete, who was also accompanying me on the next two days, also turned up and all of us went out, carrying our beers, to have a look round Tracy’s new site.  It was looking good and her ambition is very admirable.  A number of pods were almost ready to go, the toilet/shower block (made of two shipping containers bolted together and clad in wood) was ready to fit out, and there were a number of old railway carriages that were next on the list for refurbishment.  It was a little cold out in the fields so we retired to the bar to tuck into more tasty Wold Top ales.