Ascent: 800m
Weather: sunny and warm
Jetfighters: 2
Bites: 1 (on my ear)
Milage so far: 200 miles!
Set off just before 9:30m, walking through the village and out onto fields, with far views over the valley and noisy A19, passing a herd of young cows and up a track through tall trees. Pleasantly shady here, it was quite a hot one today.
The Cleveland Way shares routes today with the Coast to Coast and Lyke Wake Walk so we expected to see a lot more walkers. Even so, it was a bit of a shock when we found ourselves in the middle of a train of people.
The path led through birch woods, by a BT microwave relay station and a trig point on Beacon Hill - where, despite it being only a modest 299m high, a man was trying to take his own picture next to it. Also saw some brick pillars for things. Without the things.
We went over Scarth Wood Moor, down a stony little path to cross a road (fast cyclists!) by a cattle grid at Scarth Nick - there was a very small kissing gate I only just fit though, Rob used the horse gate.
Path in the woods (fast horses!) where there were bear paw prints in the mud, bluebells, ferns and a monument to Bill Cowley (founder of the Lyke Wake Walk which goes from Osmotherley to Ravenscar.) Heard another cuckoo. We crossed Scugdale Beck over a little footbridge, and walked through some sheep fields up to Live Moor. According to the map, there are archaic field systems here and some Bonny Cliffs.
We crossed Holey Moor by a clear path in some places laid with stone slabs - didn't fall down any holes.
At the Lord Stones, we turned off the route to have a long lunch sitting on a bench on Green Bank. The cafe at the Lord Stones car park is shut because they are rebuilding it. We had very thick sandwiches, very salty crisps and lots of fruit, plus parkin. The views are extensive, over farmland towards Teeside and Roseberry Topping. Lots of little birds, a bird of prey of some description, probably a red kite - it looked a bit like one and, as we all know by now, they are common as muck. Some people had left a tribute of flowers on the hillside, which was nice. Would have been nicer if they'd taken the plastic wrappings away with them though.
Decided to rejig our route down into Great Broughton slightly, as there seems to be nice forestry tracks down into the valley.
We left our peaceful lunch spot and walked back to official route passed the stones, which seemed to have sprouted people, to Cringle Moor. The afternoon's walk involved quite a lot of ups and downs, quite steep but nothing too long. We saw swallows on the cliffs and quite a few little green beetles. I know nothing about insects. The last up included the Wain Stones, an impressive rocky outcrop that we got to scramble over. Coming down the other side of Hasty Bank, we turned off the Cleveland Way on to the permissive path signed to Great Broughton (rhymes with (Patrick) Troughton, according to the local chap we had a chat with) through forest, down a wet little track and on to a quiet lane. The road into Great Broughton seemed quite busy, so we took a footpath towards Wainstone Woods, which was a little muddy and overgrown in parts but passable. We walked down the lane by a stream with ducks and nice houses, and crossed the road to the Wainstones Hotel (we have a four poster bed!)
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