Saltburn Sands From North Bank

North Bank is the steep cliff behind the Ship Inn at Old Saltburn, and not many know the National Trust owns it. I went there today for a bioblitz. That is jargon for an intensive, time-limited hunt to record every living thing on a patch of land, in this case bumblebees, butterflies, wildflowers, whatever moved or grew, my phone with its apps clutched like divining rods.

A path down the slope still appears on the OS map.¹Yorkshire Sheet 8. Surveyed: 1853, Published: 1856. https://maps.nls.uk/view/266664934#zoom=7.1&lat=5902&lon=6531&layers=BT Nobody has walked it in years, and nobody has picked litter from it either. Every step brought the crunch of a plastic bottle hidden under the undergrowth, a small monument to neglect.

Still, the climb earned me a view of Saltburn Sands that most visitors never see.

The tide sat at its lowest, almost beyond the pier, which now runs to 208 metres. It once stretched 460 metres, back when it had a steamer landing stage and a service across to Middlesbrough. Gales and assorted disasters have been gnawing away at it ever since.²Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saltburn_Pier

Beyond the pier is where Malcolm Campbell set his first speed record, though there must have been rather more sand to play with a century ago. He borrowed a 350hp Sunbeam Grand Prix V12 and hit 138.08 mph on 17th June 1922, beating the record Kenelm Lee Guinness had set in the same car at Brooklands a month before by more than 4mph. The French body overseeing such things refused to accept it, because the timekeepers had used stopwatches rather than the electrical apparatus the rules demanded. Campbell later bought the car from Sunbeam, rebuilt it, painted it his famous blue, and renamed it ‘Blue Bird’, and the rest, as they say, is history.³Saltburnbysea.com http://www.saltburnbysea.com/html/speed-trials.html⁴OLD MACHINE PRESS. https://oldmachinepress.com/2019/05/20/blue-bird-lsr-car-part-1-350hp-sunbeam-1924-1925/⁵National Motor Museum. https://nationalmotormuseum.org.uk/collections/vehicles/sunbeam-350hp/

• 1
  Yorkshire Sheet 8. Surveyed: 1853, Published: 1856. https://maps.nls.uk/view/266664934#zoom=7.1&lat=5902&lon=6531&layers=BT
• 2
  Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saltburn_Pier
• 3
  Saltburnbysea.com http://www.saltburnbysea.com/html/speed-trials.html
• 4
  OLD MACHINE PRESS. https://oldmachinepress.com/2019/05/20/blue-bird-lsr-car-part-1-350hp-sunbeam-1924-1925/
• 5
  National Motor Museum. https://nationalmotormuseum.org.uk/collections/vehicles/sunbeam-350hp/