C2C Day 17 The Last Day

 

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Grosmont to Robin Hood’s Bay

July 30

17 miles
Our final day of hiking Wainwright’s Coast to Coast Walk!

While at breakfast at the Geall Gallery B&B, chef Nick gave us a recommendation for an Air BnB in London (Finsbury Park area). We secured it online, and so now we finally had a place to stay for when we got to London in a couple of days, in advance of our recently booked flight home on August 2 out of London’s Heathrow Airport.

Xavier and Katrien started out of Grosmont about an hour ahead of us on this final day so they’d have an hour or two in Robin Hood’s Bay before having to be on a 4:00 P.M. shuttle from there back to their car in Kirkby Steven. Due to their time commitment for getting to Robin’s Hood’s Bay we figured they’d be hiking a faster pace than us as well, which added to the decision to not hike together this day.

At 8:45 A.M. we got on the path toward the end of the C2C trail at Robin Hood’s Bay. We picked up the trail right outside the B&B, as the main street through Grosmont was part of Wainwright’s C2C trail. The day’s hike would prove to start out very unkindly, to say the least. It was sunny and warm, but almost immediately, at the edge of the small village we were greeted by an unbelievably grueling 33% grade paved road that continued up, up, up, for 1.25 miles! It was the most difficult hiking we had done since the first few days climbing the rocky Lake District mountain paths.

I walked zig zag upward to avoid injury to my calf (while avoiding cars driving along), and Emilie just put her head down and moved forward…slowly….never looking up at the intimidating ascent. We basically hiked atop what was the highest point for as far as we could see. The idyllic views of the village and farms below were impressive, but we earned the views, big time…OMG! The reward of this climb was once atop, we got our first glimpse of the North Sea!! We could see a freighter moving slowly along some open space beyond the hills… it took a bit of focusing to recognize that the open space was the North Sea. The end is actually within sight.

The view from atop Grosmont.

After about 2 hours we got to the quaint village of Littlebeck. There were some marvelous homes, including picturesque groupings of terra cotta roofed stone houses here.

Littlebeck

The village was shrouded in woodlands, and we soon entered them. We entered Little Beck Wood, a woodland nature reserve. It was lushly green, with towering shady trees, a river, and bridleway, and many confusing spur trails. It was tough staying on the C2C trail (if we actually did), and our GPS tracklog was also confused as to where we were precisely. So, we just followed arbitrary trails in the direction of a teahouse that was visible on the GPS which was near Falling Foss, a 30 ft. waterfall that we knew was on the trail.

We hiked about a mile in the woods until we came to the falls. There were dozens of local families there, admiring the popular waterfall and likely visiting the teahouse. We stopped to ogle at the falls, briefly considered getting tea at the teahouse, decided against it, and then picked up the trail and proceeded.

After another half mile we made it out of the woods only to be confronted with another very steeply graded road…aghh….not again! This one was only about 1/3 mile but it was a killer gradient. We just kept going knowing the end, and the sea was just a few hours away. This was about the halfway point of the day.

We walked a major road for a about 1/4 mile, and a couple of miles on flat, open moor, which was kind of hard to navigate but there were C2C post markers every once in a while which we could see in the distance since the terrain was so flat. We ate our cheese sandwiches as we hiked….no stopping for lunch as there was really no place to sit. We probably should have had lunch at the teahouse…but we wanted to get to Robin Hood’s Bay with time to enjoy it…this was a long 17-mile hike.

Then we hit small roads as we started getting near the busier coastal area, until we came across our first Robin Hood’s Bay sign…indicating 3.5 miles away!

On the final leg to the coastline we were in civilization. We passed our last examples of the many, many beautiful, colorful, and masterfully detailed English home gardens that we had seen all along the hike.

Robin Hood’s Bay

We finally hit the coastline about three miles north of the endpoint. The magnificent scenery here at Robin Hood’s Bay resembled the amazing cliff-dominated coastline of St. Bees on day one. These final three miles were surprisingly difficult along and high above the coast, with several unexpected climbs. It took us about two hours to complete. But the views and the sea breeze were refreshing. The view of the town built atop stone and rock as we approached from high above the cliffside was something out of a fairytale. We finally got into downtown Robin Hood’s Bay around 4:30 P.M. We just missed Xavier and Katrien.

We found our B&B, the very nice Fernleigh B&B, dropped our back packs, met our very helpful hosts, changed our clothes, grabbed our pebbles that we took from the beach at St. Bees on Day 1 (actually Emilie carried hers with her every day while hiking) and headed to the official end point on the water.

The town was very busy. It is a popular tourist beach town for locals as well as C2C hikers. Here we met up with several of the hikers we befriended along the way: Guy (English), Danny and his father (English), Brian and Liz (American), Marcel and Debbie (Swiss), Chris (Swiss), and Olga (Dutch). They were all together on a picnic table outside the aptly named Wainwright’s pub, and we joined them for a celebratory drink (or two). How fitting for us to share the final day with Olga and Guy, whom we met on our first day, and leapfrogged each other over the 17 day journey!

Emilie and I followed Wainwright’s Coast to Coast Walk tradition and threw our pebbles that we carried from the Irish Sea into the North Sea.  Then, we all took pics of each other, and we went our separate ways.

 

We walked around the incredibly picturesque touristy area by the water, then walked to dinner at The Victoria Hotel in town that night with a magnificent view overlooking the bay, and lo and behold, there is Guy, eating dinner. So, he joined us.
In the restaurant also were Kit and Sue (Australian), who we had met on the hike. Finally, and most unbelievably we ran into John (Australian) whom we met on the train to St. Bees the day before we started the hike. We hadn’t seen him since then until this last day!

After dinner, back at the Fernleigh B&B our hosts Chris and Jane helped us figure out the best way to get to London from there for the next day. We opted to take a bus from right around the corner from their B&B for a one-hour ride to the train station in Scarborough. From Scarborough we would hop a train to London. We purchased the train tickets online.

We then settled in for our final night after completing about 200 miles of hiking over the past 17 days (2 being rest days)!! A fantastic adventure!!!