Ascent: 500m
Weather: warm, bit hazy, sea breeze
Plants: Kidney vetch, dyer's greenweed (ed- broom!), scarlet pimpernel, fragrant orchid, restharrow.
Jetfighter: 1 (hawk)
Sand: mostly in Rob's shoes
Frogs in bogs: 1
We left Saltburn at about 9:30 this morning, down the steps and passed the rusty tractors and boats around the Ship Inn. More steps lead up onto the cliffs above Saltburn Scar and on to Hunt Cliffs - a nature reserve. We saw common things like clover, birds foot trefoil, hawkweed, a flat white compound flower (also comes in pink) with feathery leaves, stitchwort, hawthorn and gorse, plus more unusual things like dyer's greenweed and a cliff top bunny and deer, a crow pretending to be a cormorant. Decided my task these next few days of coastal walking is to try and learn to distinguish between different types of sea gull. Not getting very far with this yet.
On Warsett Hill, a farmer actually stopped spraying his field so we could walk past without getting covered. This is a first.
There was an odd gibbet art work that was ugly and then some industrial heritage in the form of a Guibal Fan House which was also ugly, but more interesting. We came down off cliffs and walked through sand dunes into Skinningrove. Stopping to shake sand out of shoes we chatted with some locals, who were being very scathing about the people in the little boat's chances of getting out to sea here. We walked around the village, tea room closed. Up some steep cliffs onto Hummersea, where they've moved the path in a few metres because of erosion - there's a lot of that here. People in the little boat had given up.
Walking passed the Loftus alum quarries we briefly joined a waymarked route called the miner's way. Here we saw a yellowhammer and heard meadow pippits singing, and there was an little purple flower that I've not seen before. It was on a sign a bit later on, saying it is called restharrow.
There was a little frog in some manky boggy water that we had to skirt round and then we got overtaken by some sheep. Coming round Blue Nook, we passed Boulby potash mine (huge) and very much in operation, even saw some miners in all their gear including hard hats with torches. But more interesting (to me anyway) is knowing that 1.1km under ground here astrophysicists are attempting to detect WIMPs (weakly interacting massive particles), researching into dark matter.
From here we walked down into Staithes, avoiding the old road which has fallen off the cliff. Staithes is a pretty, colourful little jumble of houses above a harbour and we stopped for lunch at the lovely little Tea Rooms. We walked back down the 'old stubble path' above and through the houses, which seem to be built on top of each other, to the harbour and back up the cliffs again, to go over Old Nab (whose days look numbered) and over Port Mulgrave where there used to be a mine and now some people were fishing.
At Rosedale Cliffs we could hear falling rocks and could see a big pile of fresh scree at the base of Lingrow Cliffs a bit further on. According to the couple I spoke to, who lived in one of the cottages we'd just passed, this was the only bit of coastline that had changed shape in 13 years and we'd be fine. Still, we didn't linger on Lingrow Cliffs.
Round a few more cliffs, these looking more stable, we turned inland at a little duck pond and into Runswick Bay where we are staying at the hotel.
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