Yorkshire thinks it has the biggest and best of everything, and that includes its stretch of coast. So this week I’m cycling the 120-ish miles where North and East Ridings meet the North Sea, from Redcar down to Spurn Head as close to the coast as I can, via rugged cliffs, fishing villages and seaside towns, bracing promenades, railtrails, back lanes, and the odd road that disappears alarmingly over a cliff edge.
I started at the northernmost point on the historic county’s coastline: the spur of land at Gare, jutting from the Tees’s borderlands into the North Sea. See map of route
Up at the north end of the spit is a rather grim little lighthouse. The furthest up you can get on a bike is a concrete viewing platform that shows the whole panorama off at its best, which isn’t all that best on a grey, damp, cool morning like today’s.
It’s a handful of miles from here south-ish to Redcar, along scruffy margin roads past used-car and -caravan pitches and prefab business premises and snack bars. North across the Tees is the bleak, apocalyptic forest of factories, silos, sheds, pipes and metalwork that characterise Middlesborough; on the other side, a copse of wind turbines floating above the shallow sands.
At the base of the spit itself, you pass extensive fenced-off wastelands of flat black gravel, all being prepared for ‘Freeports’, where tax breaks and loosened regulations stimulate the local economy. Very local economy. In fact, local to a select few people’s pockets. There has been a lot of criticism of the Freeports from some, but they’re probably just being shellfish.
Anyway, unexplained marine life die-offs notwithstanding, it was dry, windless, and I was off on another Yorkshire adventure, so I was happy. I started pedalling south. Redcar: that’s as in ‘red car’, not near-rhyming with ‘Edgar’, unless you’re posh and southern.
Redcar’s promenade is enlivened by some plastic penguins, and a small museum claiming to house the world’s oldest lifeboat. My own rescue came thanks to an artisan coffee truck just beyond the town, which did me a rather good flat white.
Soon after came Saltburn, which I visited last year on my Tile Maps Trail. Clearly a place popular with campervanners and motorhomers thanks to its robust seaside views, and the free overnight parking.
I was out of luck again on riding the cliff railway – it was closed today for routine maintenance – but I could enjoy the bracing view from the top over the beach and fine pier.
I enjoyed the steep push up the gravel track from the harbour on the other side a bit less, but I’ll be doing a lot of this over the next couple of days: plummets down to the beach, then slogs back up to the cliff top.
The next of these episodes was shortly after at Skinningrove, which had a lifeboat monument of its own by the beach, and a long ascent up to the top of Boulby Cliffs: England’s highest at 200m-plus, gained by a succession of false summits. Or perhaps, being Yorkshire, summats. As in, What is that strange block of concrete? A work of art or summat?
The bizarre item is, in fact, a war-heritage Sound Mirror at the top – I examined it on my previous visit – and whooshed down to Staithes.
It’s one of several fishing villages that look like Yorkshire stole them from Cornwall in the night and stuffed them into some coves hoping nobody would notice. Its cobbled lanes, pubs and cafes were lively today with pavement diners and drinkers braving the autumn gloom. Some of them had, evidently, never seen a bike with panniers before. Perhaps they came from somewhere far away, with a different culture, like Dewsbury or Rotherham.
The next piece of stolen Cornwall was Runswick Bay, down at the bottom of a 30% gradient half-road, half-ski-slope, a tough push to get back up and out on.
From there I followed the old railway line to Kettleness, in the other direction from my Tile Maps Trail last year.
It may one day form the magical missing link in National Cycle Network Route 1, which has a Darién-like gap between Runswick Bay and Whitby, but for now it’s an unmade but cyclable-OK-when-dry mud/grass permissive track, with commanding views at various points to rival those of the Cinder Track that I’ll be riding later on.
That lack of an NCN1 hereabouts meant a jostle with traffic on the main road down to Sandsend and then up to the clifftop approach to Whitby, with a fine view over the harbour and up to the silhouetted ruins of the Abbey.
It’s a town full of associations – Dracula, Goths, Captain Cook, harbour boat trips, wonky little alleys, jet, fish and chips, a 50% gradient street. For me it’s also home to a YHA hostel, right next to the Abbey. It’s tremendous value out of season, and my dorm bed tonight was a measly £13.50. A sum which also got me two beers and a dinner at the Wetherspoon overlooking the harbour…
Miles today: 38
Miles from Redcar: 34