Category: Yorkshire Coast
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The cliffs at Hummersea, where the sea gave back what it took
In February 1886, the barque Cervantes hit rocks off Kettleness in a snowstorm, her crew tossed about all night in open boats before rescue found them. That is the shipwreck story. But the coast had another story waiting, and this one belongs to the people, not the ship. Eleven hundred tons of coal and coke…
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Grand Designs on the Yorkshire Coast
The National Park has put in new wooden steps down to Port Mulgrave, and for once a public body has done something rather useful. The path gets you most of the way from the cliff top to the scatter of huts below, clustered round what is left of the harbour. Walk it and you get…
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Lewis Hunton: The Boy Who Read the Rocks
Stand on the site of the old Loftus Alum Works and you feel rather small. These 213-metre cliffs are not pretty. For centuries, workers burned shale and processed aluminium sulphate here, poisoning the ground so thoroughly that almost nothing grows. The place looks dead. It seems more of the remains of the seeping pits and…
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Hob Holes: Where the Hob Lived and the Jet-Diggers Evicted
Runswick Bay takes its character from the Hob Holes, raw wounds in the shale cliffs cut by the North Sea going about its daily vandalism. They are not just the work of water on stone. They are the blank spaces where memory used to live. In those gaps sat the Hob, a local figure of…
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The Impossible Rescue—a Victorian Lifesaving Legend
A fine day today on the coast south of Robin Hood’s Bay, the sort that invites postcards and ice creams, albeit a little chilly. In January 1881 it was another matter. A storm was brewing, snow lay in eight-foot drifts on the high ground, and the village was all but cut off from the world.…
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The Cleveland Way: A Slow March Into The Sea
One from Tuesday’s little jaunt to Whitby. I had fancied a stroll along the coastal path to Saltwick, though the weather had other ideas. A mischievous wind and a steady parade of squalls were doing their utmost to suggest that I might prefer to remain upright. The path here is crumbling with admirable enthusiasm. One…
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Whitby’s East Cliff
A rare chance to wander through the nooks and crannies of Whitby, where every turn seems to ooze history. This view from the curiously named Kyber Pass looks across the Esk towards the jumble of red-roofed houses that appear to cling for dear life to the crumbling East Cliff. High above them, standing guard against…
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Clearing the Blackthorn: The Mother of the Woods Fights Back
A grey, soaking day settles over the National Trust property at Port Mulgrave. Rain drips from every branch and bramble. The task at hand: cutting back the blackthorn regrowth that is threatening to re-swallow the public footpath through a tangle of unyielding woodland. Far below, the North Sea heaves and claws at the base of…
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The Mermaids of Staithes
Staithes clings to the North Yorkshire cliffs like a stubborn barnacle, its narrow alleys and huddled cottages whispering tales of smugglers, storms, and shipwrecks. Once a modest “staith” — a landing place for Seaton, a settlement mentioned in the Domesday Book — the village grew around its tiny harbour, its people as resilient as the…
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Brackenberry Wyke: Low Tide Quarrying
Only when the sea has receded at low tide can one safely pick a path along the foot of the cliffs at Brackenberry Wyke. Here lie the ghostly remains of the old ironstone workings, where men once hacked at the exposed seams before hauling their spoil through an adit to join the great warren of…