I am ending the C2C as I began it—on a day of solitary walking.I feel tears welling up as I talk with Judith about this being my last day of the walk. Grief that it’s almost over. Happiness at what I’ve done. Some relief, too.
Near nine-thirty, I’m just getting ready to leave Intake Farm, and I receive a text from David and Michael wishing me luck on my last push to Robin Hood’s Bay. Funny, by now this doesn’t feel like a push. I’m just walking 12 miles to RHB from Littlebeck today.
The path out starts with a lovely, long, cool walk through May Beck and its forest—the “valley somewhere over there, lots of twists and turns along the river” that my guide from yesterday had told me about. This forest trail is more lovely to me than any I’ve walked in Olympia. No wonder someone spent months (years?) carving out The Hermitage from a boulder in 1790.
A waterfall, Falling Foss, near Midge Hall (once converted to a museum but now boarded up and derelict), seems to appear out of nowhere around a bend, and I understand why Wainright dubs this area one of “bewitching beauty.”I feel strong and surefooted as I tread over rocks and stepping stones and tree roots. This is different from my gingerly walking across similar footing at the beginning of the C2C. I am gaining a new kind of physical balance, which pleases me.
The southerly forest route gets left behind for a sharp turn to the north, which meets up with a north-easterly path across moors, roads, and more moors before it jogs around the coastline for the last three miles.I stand on Greystone Hills (at mile 184) and look back on how far I’ve come in just the past two days, let alone the past 18. I can feel tears sting again. They are a mix of happiness and sadness—happiness over what I’ve accomplished, what I’ve learned, whom I’ve met, how far I’ve come, how much more is yet to come—this journey never ends. And sadness that this part of the journey is almost over.
I am also sorry that I packed my last OS map and put sole (pardon the pun) trust in the Footprint map today. The path looked so easy, but it has been sometimes tricky to follow, especially over Greystone Hills, a rolling moor where promised signposts are difficult to spot (far apart and not always visible until I’d crested a rise) and where several paths crisscross from boots, sheep, and natural runoff areas.The Footprint map just doesn’t have the necessary detail over this kind of terrain, especially when a trail fades across a sheep pasture. Having passed successfully, if somewhat erratically, over Greystone Hills, for instance, I stand next to a stile and beside the only fingerpost in sight to reconnoiter. The post points to where I’ve just come from (a good sign in that respect), but not also to where I should go next.
The field ahead of me has grass cropped short as a new marine’s hair, leaving no tracks. The map is little help—I’m correctly at Normanby Hill Top by all reckoning, but the map doesn’t offer additional visual details such as boundary lines and stone walls. No one is around to ask but the sheep, and I’m not yet proficient in the language of Baah. So I just forge ahead in the general, gut-feeling compass direction and manage to find my way to something that resembles a track.
I feel more sure of my decision when I come upon a tight, hedgerow-lined dirt trail that is still muddy. Bootprints are clearly visible (yay!), and I wonder if any of them belong to friends who have passed ahead of me this week. I swear I see John and Elaine’s bootsoles at one point. This little overgrown lane is full of wildflowers and butterflies. I hang around nearly half an hour watching and trying to photograph the flighty things.
Quarter after one, I sit down to a bacon-and-cheese-melt baguette and orange-cranberry J2O at the Hare & Hounds Inn in High Hawsker. I am cooling down from a sweaty and tiring walk, easing my feet from the now-familiar ache on the sole of my heels, and wiping off miniscule hitchhiking bugs that are crawling all over me and my juice glass. Not sure what’s different about where I’ve been today—I haven’t encountered these nuisance bugs until now. Must be the nearness to the sea.
I leave High Hawsker a little after two for the last leg of the walk, three miles of which follows the cliffs of the North Sea, just as the beginning followed the St Bees Head coast. The long-range view is turning murky, the kind where the sea melts into sky at the horizon.Along the bluffs, I begin passing many people going the other way on the coastal trail—no packs, so they’re only out for day walk. Probably trekking from the caravan park outside Hawsker to RHB for the day, or coming back from the same. One man is a dead ringer for Rowan Atkinson/Mr. Bean.
Breezes cool my skin. I hear only the shush of waves, a sea-silence anytime I’m away from the cliff, the scream of distant gulls. Occasionally the smell of cow patties wafts over from the fields at my right.I pause on a cliff to take a photo of what I think is RHB way off in the distance, and am suddenly greeted by a grinning, scruffy, shirtless man wearing a backpack and camera and a bandana on his head, holding up his hand in a high-five—it’s Aussie John! He and Elaine are staying in Whitby a few miles back; he’d walked to RHB to find more postcards with Wendy the Sheep, and was hoping he might see me there. He’d also just run into Marv five minutes before—oh, yay, I may have a chance to commemorate the walk’s closure with a friend, after all.
We take photos of each other, say goodbye again (rats!), and I walk into Robin Hood’s Bay, which, John has happily informed me, is actually just around the bend (and just over my shoulder in this photo).It is also crowded. Having spent the past 19 days meeting barely anyone, I am overwhelmed by the number of people going down RHB’s hill.
It’s steep, a 33% grade straight down to the sea, and passes through an old village that’s riddled with winding alleys and angled side roads and itty-bitty peekaboo gardens. I am at the top of the village, aiming for the sea, and getting blocked by doddering old folks who walk two abreast and somehow take up the space of four, by families whose children and strollers spread like a Roman phalanx across the sidewalk, by people walking dogs that zig and zag after every new scent, by folks streaming out of car parks and side streets. I had no idea that this place is such a draw for visitors.
I weave around them all for the first 200 yards, a woman on a mission, a woman who needs clear space in front of her, dammit, before I catch myself rushing the moment. I slow down to take more in. To savor these last quarter mile of the walk.
From the bottom of the hill comes a steady drumbeat—the kind of drumbeat that Native American singers use. I recall the Native American buskers in London in their feathered and leathered regalia. My heart sinks. Surely not here. Please don’t let it be some cheesy performance here, at the end of this celebrated walk.
I round the last corner in a flood of relief—no befeathered, befringed Native American Indian mockups, but a troupe of traditional Morris dancers dressed in white shirts and trousers, bells around their knees, beribboned hats on their heads, dancing like the ensemble in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang who sing “Me Old Bamboo.” Their straw hats are decorated with wheat braids in many shapes—wreaths, ropes, baskets, each with a colorful ribbon on it.
They are at the very bottom of the hill, at the entrance to the sea slip. I decide the water ritual can wait and hang around to watch the troupe—all men except for one fiddle player—do a couple of dances. Their bells jingle cheerily as they stomp and spin and kick to the beat of drum, horn, and fiddle, and my toes tap to the rhythm. All discomfort and hurry is forgotten. I scan for a glimpse of Marv somewhere in the crowd, but do not spot him.
Finally I turn to go to the sea. I fish out the red sandstone I’ve carried for the last 190+ miles. I strip off my boots and socks and wade into the cold water. The tide is in; the sand is hardpan beneath my feet. I ask for a photo from another walker—one of a group of ten (mostly 20-something boys) who had walked the path in an astonishing seven days. Ten is really pushing it. They are exhausted, exhilarated, blistered, and flinging themselves backwards into the water with the delight of being done.I wander the tide line, happy to be barefoot and to feel the cold water around my ankles and calves. Two men play football in the sea with their re-homed German shepherd. The dog loves to chase the ball, but hates to drop it. Hisssssshhh goes the ball as it yields to the dog’s jaws, and hoouuuuhghhgh it goes again as it refills when he releases pressure. “He gets a new ball every two weeks” laughs one of his stewards.
I still have the stone in my hand. It’s been like a talisman these past weeks. I toy with the idea of keeping it, of taking it back to the US. I collect things like that. Special rocks that remind me of where I’ve been. Sometimes I keep them a long time. Sometimes I leave them at other special places I visit or live at.
No. Not this one. I need to let this one go. I need to let it go here, as a final, grateful gesture of my achievement. All that it has stood for is stored in my heart, and I need no physical reminder.
I wade to a spot that feels right and pitch the stone side-arm into the sea. It plunks unceremoniously into the water.
There. That’s it. It’s over. Who knows what the North Sea will do to that rock in the years ahead, rolling it along the seafloor, eroding it more, pushing it onto the beach. Perhaps it will decorate a child’s sand castle some day. Perhaps it will crack open a shellfish for a seagull. Or perhaps it will accompany another C2C’er on his own personal trek back to the opposite side of this island known as Britain.
The cold sea has practically numbed my feet, so I go in search of a beer at the Wainwright Bar, the last pub at the very end of the road, standing beside the cobbled sea slip and sporting an official plaque marking THE END of the 192-mile walk and illustrating the elevation changes we covered. (Official mile counts vary from 190 to 192, but it certainly can get longer with detours, alternative routes, and miles added for getting to and from off-trail lodgings.)In that cramped little pub, I meet the entire group of ten who had walked the trail in seven days. We all order beers and compare stories. I have traveled 19 days and had one day of pouring rain; they have traveled seven days and had five days of pouring rain. Such is the fickleness of timing and British weather.
I would never wish to do that walk in seven days, but their gusto for the sheer challenge of it is entertaining. They bemoan the wet camping, the piercingly aching knees, the lunches taken without break on the road. They boast of doing the Keswick (Kezzick) to Barrow walk (40 miles, mostly roads) in 12.5 hours, and of wanting to do the Lyke Wake Walk (a race of 40 miles in 24 hrs, trail walking with hills) next. One of the women is in her fifties and, judging by her effusive delight over these challenges, is clearly better equipped than I to meet them.
I sign the C2C guest book that is kept at this pub, finding entries from Michael and David (“I did it!”) and from John and Elaine, who have written “Hello Audrey, Jenny and Len” next to their entry. I write “Hello—I made it!” back to them, then find a clean line to sign my own way into C2C history.
Having finished my beer, it’s time to find my B&B, Fern Leigh, which is somewhere past the top of RHB hill. I reject the idea of putting my boots back on, and instead walk barefoot up the half mile long road. The miles and miles of walking, even in boots, have toughened my feet so much that the hard, sharp asphalt and warm, smooth cobblestones and cool, prickly grass actually feel good instead of ouchy on my soles.
I keep trying to spot Marv among the many people in town, and am disappointed to miss him. He could be anywhere, staying at any of the dozens of hotels and lodgings that line the roads here. The prospect of eating dinner alone tonight depresses me.
I walk into the cool, tiled anteroom of Fern Leigh and I am pleasantly surprised when the proprietress informs me that Marv is staying at the same B&B, just down the hall! My depression lifts, and we plan for dinner together.We end up at The Dolphin pub, upstairs at a table by the piano—literally by the piano, where we’re practically eating off of the covered keyboard. Nearby is an old forgetful jukebox that will play any song you don’t select for 20p. I order a tuna slab on a bed of basil noodles with fruit and tomato salsa. There’s so much food that I can’t eat it all.
After dinner, we briefly watch more of the Morris dancers, who have come back for an evening performance, then wander around window shopping and admiring the architecture of this quaint little village.
I am to bed by 9:30, very tired, and very glad that I had planned two nights here at RHB, instead of just one.
Trail miles: 12; actual miles walked: 13.5
