The drizzling rain was back the next morning and the path out of Sherburn to the coast irritated me as it moved in a strange crab-like gait of first shuffling up the hillside only to then come down again almost immediately. My boots soon acquired a rich layer of squelching mud and it felt like I had been in these fields all of my life. I was glad when the path finally reached escape velocity, taking me up the Wolds escarpment and into the waiting mist.

The tide was in when I made it down to the front at Filey. Right in, in fact. The waves slapped up against the wall of the promenade and had pushed the crush of T-shirted holiday makers off the promenade and onto the road. As I came into the town the cloud had lifted and watery sunshine was now dancing off the greenish grey wave tops. One or two hardy men were now stripping off to bare their chests. A spartan sense of holidaying regardless had swept up the pasty faced visitors to the sea.

I remember that as kids, my brothers and I used to patrol up and down similar promenades, often wishing we had just a bit of money to enjoy the promises put about by the sound of the arcades and the smells of popcorn vendors and candy floss. As I slowly threaded my way through the crush following Judith and Pauline towards the cliffs, I found my inner child calling for ice cream and my outer adult having the money to buy it. It was strange how suddenly arriving at the seaside was invigorating. I wanted photographs of everything I saw. Particularly the cliffs and Filey Brigg.

The Brigg, the promontory just beyond Filey is a real curiosity of this coast. It looks like an ancient crusty whale that has crashed head long into the shore and then got stuck. It is a thrusting promontory of dark calcareous gritstone which is wildly different from either the chalk of the Wolds or the clay deposited behind Filey by the last ice age. It is much older and tougher rock and this fact alone explains why it has not worn away like the rest of the coastline.

The name Brigg comes from the Scandinavian word bryggja meaning landing place. Although at high tide the Brigg does in fact look like a jetty, the reefs which the sea hides are as treacherous as shark’s teeth and would rip any boat that tried to land there to shreds. I suspect calling this death trap Brigg was in fact an old Viking joke, one that had them laughing every time a rich cargo washed up on the shore. I couldn’t wait to walk up the cliff path and enjoy a view out over the water.

It was exhilarating just to be so high up with the sea swirling below on three sides of the Brigg. The high tide threw waves slapping up against the rocks and a white snow storm of wheeling sea birds screeched and mobbed the air just like their human cousins back on the promenade. The wind blew away the clouds that had hung around me for the last ten days.

I found new life in my legs as I set out on the cliff path, quickly reaching the point where two national trails meet. I left behind the Wolds and starting on the walk along the Cleveland Way. I left Pauline and Judith behind finishing their ice creams.

Along the flat tops of the cliffs it was easy to step out and cover the distance quickly. The path was well used as it runs close to a number of caravan sites and I found myself chatting to the half-term holiday makers. As the walk continued my appearance had got wilder and wilder. At this point I looked weathered, wind burnt and in need of a shave. People still felt confident enough to approach me on a path.

I was getting a bit cocky which was probably why I decided to stretch this day’s walking and to take myself all the way to Scarborough. Looking at the maps now I realise that I covered nearly thirty miles, which probably accounts for why I began to get very tired again.

Cliff tops are difficult things on which to judge distance. Maps tell you very little about the type of terrain. You can go for miles as I did, on the relative flat of the cliff top and think to yourself - this is marvellous - and want to walk forever, and then to find yourself cursing a short twisting section around a small stream which takes you down a couple of hundred feet. At these tiring gullies I came to appreciate what a wonderful invention the bridge is.

As Scarborough finally hoved into view I was struck by its famous profile on the skyline. The castle on the promontory, set amongst the ruins of a Roman fort, with the walls of the old harbour nestling at the foot of these stately remains. Scarborough was one of those places that I had never been to before but which was instantly familiar to me as I had seen it so many times on pictures, postcards and in films. As I looked out over the resort I felt a strong sense of belonging as if I was coming into an inheritance.

I finally came to a halt that long day on the soft beach of South Sands. Judith and Pauline sat against a rock with their trouser legs rolled up looking like the perfect English tourists. I sensed that the moment had arrived. The sea which for so long had been a remote thing from the cliff tops was finally at my feet. I slipped off my boots, scraped the disgusting remains of my socks off and padded down to the water. I expected to sigh, and to see a cartoon cloud of steam rise off of my poor tortured toes. Instead I buckled at the knee. Like a deep sea diver coming up too quickly I came too rapidly to relaxation. I had got the walking equivalent of the bends. I sat down on a rock and howled. The cold immersion had given me cramp in both insteps.

When I told Judith that I wanted to be as near to the castle at Scarborough as possible next morning I had not bargained on her years of experience of driving in Nigeria. She had the car control of a rally driver. We fairly hurtled along the roads from Sherburn to Scarborough and moved like a rocket through the tight narrow streets of the old part of town. As we approached the impressive gate work of the castle I began to regret the exact wording of my request. We shot up the steep path that led to the entrance and the gate itself vanished behind the car’s raised bonnet. I thought we were going to take the castle by storm.

It was quiet and peaceful on the promenade over-looking North Bay. A middle-aged couple were playing with a kite and an even older looking pair of men effortlessly jogged past me enjoying the view. The sun was out but it wasn’t warm. The wind still blew as though it bore me a personal grudge. I set out north with my eyes filled up by the sea.

This was the first time on the walk that I met other long distance walkers. I enjoyed saying hello and stopping to talk. Some of the younger male parties, however, ignored my overtures and kept striding along in silent single files, focused inwardly on the delights of their blisters. They looked like the adverts in outward bound catalogues, striking lifted-leg poses as they scanned the horizon clutching their map cases and water proofed gear. Fortunately for me not everyone fits into this ready made mould.

When I first saw ‘the Thinker’ ahead of me on the trail I thought I was following Paddington Bear. A sort of new age young cousin of Paddington’s maybe. He wore a large floppy hat and carried a battered old suit case. He had lashed a couple of bin bags to his back in which he carried a sleeping bag and eight cans of beans. He seemed keen like me to make human contact.

"I’m doing it cheaply" he told me. Sleeping on the beaches. Gathering firewood out of the flotsam at the high tide mark. He showed me where he had singed his sleeping bag a couple of times already. I asked him where he was heading for. He looked thoughtful for awhile and said ‘ a good view of the sea’. We both cast our eyes over the expanse of the North Sea and then laughed.

I warmed to this way of walking, of thinking. Slow, if he wanted it to be. He had his life on his back and wasn’t supposed to be anywhere. He had given himself the task of just being here when it was now. When I left him he was still sitting down, looking out at the sea, his chin resting on his hand in a classic thoughtful pose.

In comparison I was like a train, like the crocodiles of stern-faced men I passed this morning. I had set myself targets. Miles to be walked. I had places to be and people to see. There was the irony of the fact that my friends in the City thought I had dropped out. I was the walker with a personal organiser. I had applied every lesson I had learnt in business to planning a perfect journey. I had been so proud of myself for simply enduring this far that I thought that endurance was the measure of the thing. I thought that I had to stick to the rules.

There is no right way to walk England. There are no correct places to go. Perhaps my planning of a route was practical but I began to realise that it had weaknesses as well as strengths. I had not allowed myself the opportunity to take things easy. Perhaps the time had come to stop and take stock of the view. Perhaps the time had come to write a postcard or two.

Ravenscar is one of those places to which the map gives more prominence than it really should. A guilty acknowledgement of this place’s failed dreams. A lonely cliff top place that sighs with regrets in the strength of the fierce sea breeze.

Ravenscar is a never place. This would-be rival to Whitby never got built, never made money. The whole project to build a holiday town here soon went pearshaped, which is not surprising as Ravenscar is a remote place without a decent beach. Of the planned resort all that really remains is the hotel and an odd sense of waiting that the emptiness of the surroundings suggest. Waiting for the bricks, waiting for the beach huts. Waiting for the ice creams, the shining kiddies faces . Waiting up on the cliff top for a moment of popularity. Waiting to join the long list of England’s romantic ruins.

The whole North Yorkshire coastline is a tourist area now and from the top of the cliff that drops away going north from Ravenscar I got an excellent view of the wide expanse of Robin Hood’s Bay. This is a popular haunt for school field trips as well as holiday makers. When the tide is out the rocky ledges form the pieces of a Jurassic jigsaw puzzle. The bits that remain are the hard bits, the curved shapes of these remains show that there was once a huge dome out there in the bay where now there is only sea.

Sea erosion has played a large part in shaping this coastline; a process that is still going on. Just past Bogle Hole a huge section of the cliff had recently broken away taking the old coast path with it so that I was redirected inland away from the coast. As I walked I wondered at the different rock formations that I saw below me.

Another characteristic of this coast line is the deep wykes (as the small inlets are called locally) which break up the cliff walk which means that the coast path walker gets plenty of practice of going up and down. Plenty of chances to sweat. The road that climbs out of the small beach at Robin Hood’s Bay is justifiably famous for being a steep climb.

When I dipped my toes in the North Sea that afternoon I felt a wave of tension flow out of me and into the sea. I lay by the shore with my head on my pack and looked over my large scale map at the distance I had walked since Aylesbury. For the first time I admitted to myself that I had come a long way. My dread of being a failure began to leave me.

One of my favourite memories of walking up the east coast of England came on the wide sweeps of cliffs that took me to Whitby that evening. Out here miles from the nearest road, I walked on my own disturbed only by noise from the wind and the sea. The folds of the cliff top fascinated me. They were like waves rising and falling, and I floated over them like a piece of flotsam. The openness of the fields and the sea around me gave this part of the walk a sense of timelessness, a sense of this coastline’s history.

I was approaching Whitby from the south, and the modern town was hidden from view, down in the valley below the cliff tops. My angle of approach to the ruins of the abbey gave a suggestion of what Whitby must have looked like in its heyday (providing that is, one was sufficiently tired to overlook the large caravan park and an eighty foot radio mast that were also in the view). Back in the twilight world of 7th century England this was the most important place in the British Isles. It was at the Synod of Whitby that the elders of the church sorted out the thorny, heretical problem of when to celebrate Easter. It’s tough to imagine that this subject could cause such a rift in the Christian world but like all great controversies it was a political subject. The date of Easter was symbolic of the centralisation that was going on in the church. The church of Rome was stamping its authority and orthodoxy on the maverick Celtic world. The synod of Whitby was about the victory of orthodoxy.

I had been walking so long now that I could feel the pace of the world that met at Whitby. I could imagine myself as a monk coming along these cliff, organising my arguments as I approached this most important of meetings. I felt that I should have approached Whitby from the north though. I did not want to be the voice of authority and order. I wanted my individuality and my creativity back.

I wanted to do more than just endure the walk that I had planned.

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© Gavin Stewart 1996-2004