My Advent Calendar - Day 22

December 22^nd

Welcome to Day 22 of my Advent Calendar, where I am reliving my Coast to Coast adventure!

Day 14 – Part 1

~ Final morning, We get lost, Falling Foss, Woods, Rain again, We can see the sea! ~

The last day is designed, like the Tour de France, as a victory parade; a nice stroll through woodland and fields to the cliffs on the east coast, before arriving at Robin Hood’s Bay. The sea was only about four miles (in a straight line) from the Bed and Breakfast we’d stayed in, and we were hoping for a pleasant end to our mammoth walk.

            For the last time then we donned our smelly clothes and damp boots and heaved our bags onto our backs. We bid a fond farewell to the farmer and his wife and set off in a rough easterly direction. We left the farm and passed another before crossing a stream and followed a sign post pointing us to Falling Foss. However we soon found ourselves in a field with no apparent exit. I looked at the map and decided we’d missed our turning, so we headed back. The turning I wanted, though, seemed to go through the second farm and Hannah wasn’t keen on trespassing, so we tried a second time crossing the stream, but still to no avail. Bar going right back to the start and taking a different route altogether we were a bit stuck and definitely lost but we knew where we wanted to get to, so we looked at the map, drew a straight line, crossed a few fences and got there. Hey, we’d been walking for 14 days, I think we had the right to make a short cut.
            We found a track and shortly after entered a wood where we stumbled across Falling Foss. This is a beautiful waterfall and we stopped for a while and watched it. We were also keen to press on though, and so we headed on into the woods. Somehow we ended up on the wrong side of the stream, but I found a handily fallen tree which we could shuffle across, just to be really adventurous!
            A while later the woods ran out and we emerged into rain. We quickly ducked back under the shelter and donned rain coats before moving on. We’d hoped for our last day that the rain would hold off, but sadly not. We followed the road, heads bowed and then cut across a stretch of moorland. Hannah got to use her GPS again when we lost the path and got bogged down, but aside from that we made it across safely.
            We carried on along the road for a while and eventually the rain eased off. We cut into a field and disturbed some nearby cows, who were obviously hungry. Leaving them behind, we then crested the hill and beyond us lay the final stretch of England, before the blue North Sea began.

 

Falling Foss

 

In the woods with Hannah in front

 

The sea!