Walk, Hawsker - Robin Hood's Bay

Walk, Hawsker - Robin Hood's Bay. Approximately 6 mile or 10 kilometres

Not quite a circular walk we came back the same way.

Nice warm sunny day but it was practically lunch time before we set out for a walk.  From the pub car park in High Hawsker we walked through the village, towards the sea, along Bottoms Lane. We knew there was an old railway that was now a coast a costal footpath, it runs towards Whitby one way and Scarborough via Robin Hood's Bay the other way. The walks are about 4.5 miles to Whitby Centre (but there is a shorter walk to Whitby) and about 3 miles to the sea at Robin Hood's Bay. We found the rail path by following the campsite signs and is was just passed the first campsite we came to. We had no plans for the walk but as we would be camping closer to Whitby later in the week, so we set off towards Robin Hood's Bay.

With the green fields and the sea on the left and wonderful hilly countryside on the right this is quite a beautiful walk. Down below us on the left, we could see people waking the Cleveland way but this is a much more meandering up and down trail, hugging the coast line but it can be used to make this a circular walk. The last part of the track into Robin Hood's Bay was downhill, I was a bit surprised that is was so steep and incline.

The walk to the top of Robin Hood's Bay took about an hour then we had to find our way down into the village as the signs are not very good. We walked along Mount Pleasant North then left onto Whitby road, where the first thing we did was to stop at a shop and bought all the ingredients we needed to make a picnic. Then it was down the very steep hill to the sea front, where we found a seat on the sea front to have our picnic.

We would usually have just had fish and chips here and there is a very good chip shop at the bottom of the hill but we had that yesterday, also we are trying to lose weight so it was the picnic. We had lean roast beef sandwiches, half way trough eating Dot noticed that the meat we had just bought was passed its sell by date but we ate anyway. This has happened to us quite a few times buying from country shops on a Monday, when they are getting rid of food not sold over the weekend.

We then had a walk on the beach for half an hour before heading for the pub, the Bay Hotel, who usually have a good selection of hand pulled beers. I had a pint of Deuchars IPA, Dot had a lager and lime, then we sat in the sun outside Wainwright's bar of Bay Hotel, on a warm September afternoon. This place also seemed to be the end point for the cost to coast walk (about 190 miles), made famous by Alfred Wainwright, hence the name of the bar and this steady trickle of walker was steadily filling the bar.

We now had to get back up the hill, we did it in stages stopping at shops along the way, we even thought we would have a drink at the pub half way up but typically for Yorkshire, it had just closed. We did however have another drink at the Grosvenor Hotel at the top of the hill, I had a pint of Timothy Taylor Landlord and Dot had another lager and lime.

The rest of the walk back to the start point, was a reverse of the walk there, although it was nearly all uphill, we knew that we had to get back up the incline, but it didn't stop climbing until we were just about back, strange that we didn't notice this going the other way.

So by the time we got back to the village we were thirsty again and stopped at the pub there for another, I had a pint of Theakston's Best Bitter and Dot had her usual.