Low tide at the beautiful Saltwick Bay
It’s confession time. I thought about this week’s blog post whilst hanging out the washing at about 9.30am this morning. Which, given this should have gone out at 8.00am was a bit of a boob on my part. I’m blaming the Easter bank holiday – today feels like Monday, not Tuesday!
Rather than my usual ‘how to’ style posts, this week I’m going to take you on a wee tour of North Yorkshire, mainly because I’ve just come back from a lovely few days up there in our campervan, Sadie. Our weekend can be summarised as follows: windswept moors, hilly forest, windswept beaches, more windswept moors. As you can gather, it was pretty windy.
Sadly I don’t have any photos of our 20-mile mountain bike ride around Dalby Forest. Partly because I felt that carrying my new phone around the trail was guaranteed to make me fall off and squash it, and partly because I am pretty slow on the mountain bike and was therefore at the back of the pack. So you have to take my word for it that it was a sunny day and a fun route. I biked about 90 percent of it (which is good going for me) and felt totally knackered by the end of it (always the sign of a good day out).
Saltwick Bay
Saltwick Bay is about a mile down the coast from Whitby on the east coast of North Yorkshire. It’s pretty popular, but at low tide it’s big enough that you can wander away from the crowds. We went in search of driftwood and found fossils. Many, many fossils. There’s also the remains of a shipwreck:
If you’re feeling a bit claustrophobic in Whitby, it’s well worth the walk over the cliff-top path to Saltwick Bay. Just make sure you keep an eye on the tides and don’t get trapped.
Blakey Ridge and Rosedale Valley
We had arranged to meet my sister and her partner for a walk in Rosedale valley the following day. As Sadie is a bit of a beast, we decided to get to the the start of our walk – the car park on the top of Blakey Ridge – early, to nab a good parking spot. Which meant we ate breakfast with this beautiful view:
Pretty good, huh? Blakey Ridge is a beautifully wild, desolate spot. The lonely Lion Inn stands proud, battered by the wind; a cosy refuge on a winter’s day. But on this occasion, the sun was out and we had our sandwiches packed.
Rosedale is a tranquil valley, surrounded by wild moors. It also has an interesting history. During the nineteenth century, the valley was mined for its high-quality iron ore. The remains of the brick kilns can still be seen, high on the hillside.
To transport the ore to the foundries, a railway was built and the remains of the tramlines now offer a flat, high-level path around the valley.
On a clear day, you get stunning views across the valley. Keep your eye out for ring ouzels (the blackbirds of the moors) and listen for the call of curlews circling overhead. It’s a wild, windswept and beautiful place – a taste of the best North Yorkshire has to offer.