...nothing but footprints

My final outing in 2013 was a very enjoyable 8 mile circular walk closer to home, in the Yorkshire Wolds, starting and finishing at the secluded and picturesque village of Thixendale.   As I was following a route I'd walked on at least three previous occasions, no maps were needed.   It was a blustery day with a mixture of sunshine and clouds and up on the higher ground it certainly felt every bit like December.   In the more sheltered valleys though, out of the wind, it was surprisingly pleasant. The Yorkshire Wolds is an area of chalk hills and dry valleys which stretch in an arc from west of Hull by the Humber Bridge, northwards and then eastwards to meet the North Sea at Flamborough Head. Where the chalk is visible in the white cliffs of Flamborough Head is the very eastern most tip of the Wolds.   Gradually, as the line of chalk disappears inland, the coastline changes to boulder clay.   You can actually see where the boulder clay coastline o...

As the Christmas holidays approached and the annual hint of panic began to creep in (presents to buy, cards to write, cakes to bake and all that stuff), I couldn't see how we could find the time to go off walking amidst all the preparations.   Then I had a brainwave.   Why not combine the two?   A favourite walk AND a Christmas shopping trip.   Hadrian's Wall provided the ideal solution - a walk along the wall followed by a night at my "hotel of the year" ( The Centre of Britain, Haltwhistle ) combined with a trip to the Metro Centre shopping mall at nearby Gateshead.   Perfect!   And so that's just what we did, setting off very early on the first Saturday morning in December, arriving at a frosty Once Brewed Visitor Centre at around 10 a.m.   From here we set off on an eight mile circular route which we'd walked earlier in the year.   I don't usually provide route directions (this isn't, after all, just a blog about walking) but here I'm going t...

Here we are, two weeks into 2014 and I still have four walks remaining from 2013 to write about before I'll be up to date.   So, without further ado, there follows an amalgamation of two walks into one, covering a section of the Cleveland Way in North Yorkshire.   One of the problems with walking at this time of year is that the ground underfoot can be very soggy, if not impassable in places, and so towards the end of November I did a little research in an attempt to find a route that might be relatively firm and dry.    It didn't take long to find the perfect spot, not too far from home, being a section of the Cleveland Way from Cloughton (just north of Scarborough) to Robin Hood's Bay.   The Cleveland Way is a National Trail of 110 miles which begins in the North Yorkshire market town of Helmsley and ends on the coast at Filey Brigg.   It's very much a trail of two halves, with the first section following the Cleveland Hills along the edge ...