Jimmy Goanna Rides Again: Day 16: Dromonby Bridge to Blakely Ridge

Back to the escarpment

I leave my B&B and head up Busby Lane turning left at the Black Swan, taking the road and then the track and then the calf path that leads to Broughton Bank, on top of the escarpment I left yesterday.

Unbelievably seeing the same two women taking their morning walk as I did 4 years ago.
I know this because we chatted to them then and I did again today.

Dave told me of a short cut through the forest that went around the escarpment cutting off some of the height.

To me that is not in the spirit of the walk.

So I head up, some four hundred metres up from the village, a grueling march this early in the day and really not making any headway just getting back to where I left off.

Pheasent

Picking up the Cleveland Way as I again head east to the Wain Stones. My reward was the sighting of four pheasants one which I got a photo of.

The Wain Stones, on the western end of Hasty Bank rise like sentinels, standing watch over this barren landscape, these huge boulders are carved with cup and ring markings, dating back to the Bronze Age; they may once have held significant importance to prehistoric locals.

Today they are just in my way.

The last time I was up here we went left around these huge rocks onto a difficult path that climbed back up to the main route.

Wain Stones

Today I went right, on what turned out, I thought, to be a goat path.

There are no goats up here so it must have another use.

I knew I needed to be a little higher up the hill, but to get there was a scramble through knee high heather on rough ground.

I was not lost, so to say, but not exactly on the correct path.

It turned out not to be a goat path but the path that lemmings take as it stopped at the edge of a precipice.

Where to from here?

Then to my relief the helicopter came.

This majestic beast flew overhead, doing a reconnaissance along the ridge, as if looking for injured or dead walkers.

I gave the thumbs up and this great bird “tilted” in response.

Now that was a moment.

No need to be rescued because of a lemming path, I turned back across the heather, scrambled up and found the trail down to the cross road.

This point is known as Clay Bank Top and the spot where walkers are picked up and ferried to their accommodation. Yesterday that is, and then dropped back in the morning to start the day from here.

Yesterday I choose to leave the escarpment earlier than most and made my way on foot to my accommodation.

Today it has taken me 2hr 15m and nearly 8km in, to get here, it will be a long day and this time longer than most.

There is no escaping the overall distance what is not done today needs to be done tomorrow.

I headed up the steep climb onto Ura Moor.

Alone.

This was werewolf territory I thought.

The landscape like no other with no trees as far as the eye could see, just multi-coloured heather.

Stone obelisks marking the way across the moor top, some with grotesque faces, obviously to ward of the evil that lurks.

No matter how remote this walk is, there are always sheep on the high ground.

Today these were the black-faced ones, with lambs that look like little imps.

I thought I should catch a lamb, for sacrificial purposes should I spot a werewolf.

But they are hard to catch as they are very wary of lone walkers particularly men wearing lip balm.

I press on.

I leave the Cleveland Way, just past Bloworth Crossing and pick up a disused railway line, now a cinder track, for the comfortable, if not long walk, around Farndale Moor and onto High Blakely Moor, heading to one of England’s remotest pubs the Lion Inn on Blakely Ridge.

But it was not comfortable, as no sooner had I made the turn off the Way the temperature dropped by 5 degrees in as many seconds and the sky opened up and the rain came and the wind blew.

I was in shorts.

At the side of the track I kitted up in full wet weather gear including gloves. No more thought of werewolves I needed to survive the weather.

I had been walking for nearly four hours and seen no one, not a sole, dead or alive, save for the helicopter.

My GPS beeped, 3km to the next waypoint. The tracked veered left then right and it was nearly 5.5km before I reached the waypoint where I could see the Inn, a 16^th century free house sitting on top of the highest point on the north York moors.

Soaked to the bones

Only another 4km to go, finally in the sleeting rain that started two hours ago, my face numb from exposure, I climbed the muddy path off the cinder track. A path that was now a small stream crossing the last sheepfold I then stepped over the threshold and into the warmth.

A pint of Old Peculier please.