Coast-to-Coast Day 16

Grosmont-Robin Hood's Bay. 15.5 miles, 7 hours. Into the home straight - quite a long day's walking and the feet were really starting to suffer. The day starts with quite a long stiff climb out of Grosmont on country lanes up onto Sleights Moor.    

After crossing the busy A169 road, the route drops down to the delightful hamlet of Littlebeck, where we paused by the ford for some refreshments. Whitby Abbey becomes visible in the distance on this stretch, and keeps re-appearing at intervals during the day.   

After leaving Littlebeck, the route passes through delightful woodland, towards the spectacular waterfall of Falling Foss. On the way, you pass a carved out rock, apparently created in 1754 for a local schoolmaster, referred to as The Hermitage.  

Falling Foss waterfall is a short distance further on, slightly spoiled in our view by a large tea room built on the viewing platform and throngs of day visitors and yapping dogs on the day we visited. 

However, a short distance further on we found a nice quiet spot by the stream to enjoy our lunch. 

After leaving the woods, the path climbs on a lane and across Sneaton Moor, the last piece of moorland that is crossed on the route. Dropping down off the moor, you get the final view of Whitby Abbey before heading towards the North Sea and the end of the C2C.  

The path then passes through the village of Hawsker, which is fairly unremarkable, but does show one of the first road signs pointing to our destination. The distance on the C2C route is slightly more than the road distance, but at least the sign gives encouragement that the end is close. 

After leaving Hawsker, we passed through a couple of caravan sites, but at long last the North Sea comes into view directly in front of you, and we re-join our old friend, the Cleveland Way for the final stretch into Robin Hood's bay. 

Our feet were really aching now, so we found the final 2-3 mile clifftop walk into Robin Hood's Bay quite tough, even though it was lovely to see the sea.     

Robin Hood's Bay remains intriguingly out of view until you are less than half a mile from the end of the walk, but it eventually appears as you round the final curve on the clifftop path.   

We staggered (almost literally) into town, dropped our rucksacks at our B&B (Raven House) and rewarded ourselves with fish and chips at the Fish Box, with nice sea views.    

We then made the final walk down the steep hill to the finish line outside the Bay Hotel by the dock, with the obligatory photo/selfie by the wall plaque:     

So, we had done it - it had only taken us 4 years, but it was very enjoyable in spite of the sore feet.  We were blessed with pretty good weather on our trip, with only one total washout day on the Bampton-Orton section in the middle. We would quite like to go back and do the final clifftop walk into Robin Hood's Bay one day, when our feet are not hurting so much, so we can really enjoy this wonderful final section of the walk.