Walk, Sandsend from Whitby

Walk, Sandsend (from Whitby), March 2008. Approximately 5 mile or 8 kilometres

Turned left out of Sandfield House Farm Caravan Park, and followed the road passed the golf course to Sandsend.  It is now you realise you are following the line of an old railway, the old Whitby Redcar and Middlesbrough Union Railway.  Although the private land of the golf course, makes it so that are unable to walk the line of railway along this section.
  

The road goes down into the village where we cross over East Row Beck, then back to the front where you walk along the road or the beach (depending on the tide).  There is a pub next to East Row Beck and it looked like a good place for a beer after the walk. After a short walk, at Sandsend Beck its back on the road over the beck.

 

Then through the car park, to a set of steps at the far side, to join the path of the disused railway just north of the old station building.

We hadn't intended to walk along the old railway (we didn't even know it was there) but it seemed like a good idea and I wanted to see where it went.  So off we went, the path climbed from here up the incline and there are very good views back towards Sandsend and Whitby.

 

The path follows the coast and is very bleak but strangely beautiful in places, we sat for a while at the top of the incline for a rest and admired the view back to Sandsend and Whitby.

 

The path continues to snake along the coast, through a very interesting landscape, passed Deep Grove quarries, until it comes to a steep hill at Over Dale.  Here a tunnel took the railway under the hill to Kettleness, unfortunately the entrance is sealed and to continue the walk you must go over the hill.  As we had not intended this walk and didn't know where it went or how far it was, after exploring the imitate area, we turned back the same way we came, towards Sandsend.

 

The views are best on the way back and we where looking forward to a beer in the pub in Sandsend.  Back down in Sandsend, we passed one pub on the seafront but it didn't look very good, so kept going to the one we picked out on the way but as has happened to us many times in Yorkshire, it was closed.  We were not the only ones let down, two other groups of people tried to get in while we were deciding what to do next.  What we did decided was to walk back to the site.  Luckily there are public toilets on the front, just before the road starts its steep climb, back up towards the campsite.

Not part of the walk but what happened next.

Back outside the site, its too early to go back to the van, so we walk to the pub you can see from the campsite, the Whitehouse.  The beer is expensive and I ask if they have tomorrows England game but they don't, anyway I do not like it in there that much and even though we have already walked miles, I persuade Dot to continue on into town.  So we walked along the cliff top and then down to the to the pubs for some beers and a rest before eventually heading back the way we came.  We looked in the Unicorn, another Sam Smiths pub that we had just discovered, it was very busy but not very clean and a bit smelly, we just had the one in there.  then we moved on to the Jolly Sailor, the other Sam Smiths pub that we had used before and it was a lot better.