Farewell Coast, Hello (New?) York

Halfway through the C2C, I decided I would leave my trusty trekking poles behind at Robin Hood’s Bay, propping them at the end of the road for someone to find for their own journey. I write a “FREE to Good Home” sign and attach it to the poles in a baggie and trundle down the slope for what is to be my last visit to the North Sea.


The village is very quiet at six thirty in the morning on a Monday. A few stalwarts are walking their dogs or taking beach photos. Milk has been delivered. Shops are closed. There’s no activity in front of the many B&Bs that bustled with people all weekend. I have the place to myself to explore afresh.



Seagulls caw and squawk and screech from every rooftop. They lift off and float down in clouds of white and gray and brown. The tide is very far out again. Rain clouds hover way out over the sea; a shaft or two of sunlight breaks like a spotlight onto the water before the cloud-mist overtakes it again.



I find some lovely vantage points for views, secluded B&Bs down secluded walkways (including one cleverly signed as Upside Down Cottage), and amazingly teensy gardens at most of the cottages. These gardens are barely 8x6—big enough for a bench and a few pots, and for sharing a low fence with the neighbor’s 8x6 plot. Some also overlook the freshwater stream that flows through town to the sea. Another garden is a mere strip of paving that wraps from the front door to an alcove that’s big enough for a two-person bench. A waist-high fence and gate demarks the spot as private along the main thoroughfare of the village.

I walk home in a misty drizzle that is enough to wet my hair and clothes but that dries quickly while I pack in the room. In my last rite of ending the C2C, I remove the Sherpa Van luggage tag from my bag; no more helpers to haul my pack for me. After mailing my last batch of postcards, I intend to bus to Scarborough for a train to York.

I sit at breakfast writing all this and hear radio reports that bombs are still falling in Lebanon. The contrast is jarring.

Rather than bus to Scarborough, I accept a ride with my fellow B&B’ers Jackie and Barry, from Lincolnshire, about 100 miles south of Robin Hood’s Bay. I said no to their offer at first—my habit of self-sufficiency—and then accepted it with gratitude. No one offers something unless they want a yes, so I’m learning to say yes myself, to graciously accept kindnesses that come my way.

Jackie and Barry visit Robin Hood’s Bay and its area many times a year. They especially like to come during midweek off-season, when it’s quiet. They take me to Scarborough on a scenic route through an old estate that’s now a boarding school, through Fylingdales, around Cloughton, then along the seaside route of Scarborough, which, surprisingly, has the emaciated remains of a substantial 12th- to 14th-century castle that overlooked the harbor.

Scarborough today has a hotel row on the cliffs like Sandown on Wight, and rapidly devolves into a bay that’s fronted with arcades, food stalls, casinos, rock candy booths, entertainment venues, and so on. Lots of flashing marquis lights and bright colors and oversized plastic mascots beckoning tourists in to spend endless time and endless money. It’s like a small-scale blend of Coney Island, Las Vegas, a traveling carnival, and country fairgrounds sticky with cotton candy.

I take the 10:45 train to York. About a week is left of the trip now. I can feel it winding down, and I feel sad about its end, and a little scared of how I’ll handle the next steps. They seem so clear to follow on the map, and then get hazy in the middle distance. Yet I know now that, just as with every step on the C2C, my life is guided with love and adventure, and I’ll find the wayposts as I need them.

The train is very full today; for the first time on the trip, I’m glad to be in a first class seat. It’s quite a contrast, this train is, to the little diesel I took to Pickering. High speed. Quieter. Smoother. Toilets on board. No way to hang out a window, though. Too bad.

The trip to York is uneventful except for the snafu of a family of three who sit at the table across the aisle. They live somewhere between York and Scarborough and were supposed to be heading south to York but got on the northbound Scarborough train by mistake. As we pull up to our first stop—their home town—the husband says, “We’ve been gone an hour and we’re back where we started!” They have a good laugh. “It’s a good day for a train ride, anyway,” he concludes. Indeed it is: sunny and lots of countryside to look at.

The youth hostel in York is about one and half miles from the rail station. Check-in is easy, and the facility is quite nice. Big. Lots of amenities. And I’m locked out of my room only from 10 to 1 for cleaning; other hostels are often closed all day. I’m here for five nights, and I intend to park myself at the hostel lounge to catch up on my journaling and prepare as many blog entries as I can. I find these take time to write, and I want to have as much done as possible before I head back to the US, where I’ll finish them up.

I had spent several days in York on a trip in the mid-80s and know it’s a good place to use as a base. This time, I have less desire to tour the city than to just live here for a while.

I liked York the last time I was here. I’m not sure I like it now, though. It seems a lot more commercialized than before. Big-name stores, and tons of shops everywhere—shops, shops, shops. I don’t remember it being that way then, but maybe it was.

I walk into town and find the Minster under partial scaffolding—again (do cathedral renovations and cleanings ever get done?). Micklegate Bar (one of the five gated entrances to this medieval walled city) has been converted from a lovely artist’s studio of 20 years ago to a cheesy tourist attraction full of cheesy 3D tableaus of grimy mannequin men in a grimy prison, cheesy chopped-off heads dangling on staffs (they used to do that for real from this gate), a cheesy gift shop, and the cheesy chance to have your picture taken as if you’ve been beheaded. I wonder if the bar’s artist from 20 years ago, Brian Cotterill, is alive, let alone still living in York. I still have the beautiful chalk drawing of the Minster that he gave me.



I walk the whole wall walk today, all two miles of it. I hadn’t done that the last time I was here. Part of the walk is no longer walled, but the city has embedded brass medallions in the sidewalks to show the original path. I grab a wall-walking guide and have fun picturing what the missing parts once looked like. The walk offers some lovely elevated views of the Minster, the city, and its environs. Funny to think that this town was once surrounded by fields to the horizon, instead of M roads and buildings.

At the south side, a peculiar motorized vehicle is crawling up and down an embankment, spewing grass in its wake. It’s got four independently moving wheels, a fine sense of balance, and an uncanny ability to assess its environment. Like some lumbering yellow metal turtle, it backs up and sidesteps, revolves a quarter turn, crawls down hill, pauses at a knoll to deliberate its next move, then revolves again and lurches across the hill.

I look around and finally spot the real mind behind the machine: a man standing in the shadow of the wall and pushing levers on a remote control box. Several men approaching on the wall also stop to watch the Spyder (so it’s called), taking photos and exclaiming, “That’s exactly what I need at home!”

In some parts of the walk, placards give interesting detail about a particular spot, such as the building where explosives had been stored and that went up in flames, or the building that looks like a brick igloo, where they used to store ice.

One of the bars (gates) has an original portcullis, that grid of wooden gate you always see in movies dropping down to keep marauders out of a city. It’s stored way up high in a recessed area, but its thick wood, and that of the doors that once closed up to it, are remarkable in their age.

A very non-medieval barrage of breeps and bings emanates from another stone bar. Flickering, high-tech flash of blue light reflects off the interior walls, as if a television were on in a darkened room. Inside, a band of tourists encircles a multimedia video game projected onto a table.

It’s a wall-walk race. Each quadrant of the table shows a fast-forward video of the wall walk, interspersed with stops at various locations for a pop quiz. If you answer the question correctly about where you are, you get to speed along. The one to get around the wall the fastest wins. I do pretty well on my game (237 seconds), but only because I had read the brochure and previewed some of the questions by looking over people’s shoulders before I played.