It is endlessly surprising—though it really should not be—how absurdly fragile this stretch of the old Cleveland Railway remains, teetering along the edge of Hunt Cliff as though daring gravity to intervene.
Originally built between 1865 and 1867, its grand purpose was to move ironstone from Loftus to the blast furnaces east of Middlesbrough. Rather than tackle the engineering challenge of going under Warsett Hill, the line performs an extravagant loop around the cliff, conveniently avoiding the miners digging holes in the top. Nowadays it hauls potash, polyhalite, and rock salt—thrilling stuff. With the government now puppeteering the formerly Chinese-owned British Steel, one can only hope that steel from Skinningrove will also continue to be carried.
Squeezed to the seaward side of the railway is the Cleveland Way, a scenic footpath bravely fenced off from the drop by what appears to be leftover kindling.
From the low tide line to the top of Warsett Hill lie 170 metres of sedimentary melodrama, recording nearly 16 million years of pre-human existance. Back then, Yorkshire fancied itself a tropical paradise beneath the Jurassic Sea. The sand, silt, and clay dumped here were not unlike what still seeps from the Tees—just considerably more significant.
At around 100 metres above sea level, the footpath looks down on a coast that continues to disintegrate beneath it. The North Sea, patient and merciless, gnaws at the base. Water sneaks in from above, lubricating the clay which obligingly slips over the sandstone beneath. This geological sabotage is particularly evident closer to Saltburn and Skinningrove.
Hunt Cliff once hosted a Roman signal station, whose grand mission was to keep an eye out for pirates and assorted barbarians. The station, with predictable loyalty to its cliff-top post, has now mostly hurled itself into the sea.
Further along, the Huntcliff Ironstone Mine operated on the seaward side with a drift under the railway. It too has mostly vanished, leaving behind a loading ramp and the Guibal fanhouse—testaments to mankind’s brief and futile resistance to erosion.
These cliffs, among the tallest in England, also enjoy the honour of being ecologically precious. Kittiwakes, clearly not ones for low-rise nesting, breed here in numbers some consider significant.
Altogether, Hunt Cliff sits within a “Heritage Coast” of “national importance,” which is a polite way of saying it has not yet collapsed entirely and is full of things one ought to appreciate.
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