Coastal Reverie: From Saltburn to Cattersty Sands

With the tide in my favour, I set off on an early morning walk from Saltburn along the coast. The conditions were almost too favourable, rendering the barnacle-encrusted scar an easy path. Before long, I found myself nearing Cattersty Sands.

After passing Seal Goit, a name hinting at visits from marine mammals, I glanced back and was taken aback by a faint horizontal rainbow, or more precisely, a ‘circumhorizontal arc’. This was no ordinary rainbow; it was quite a rare phenomenon, not the common arc seen after a rain shower, but one formed when sunlight interacts with high-altitude ice crystals in the clouds. Even in these troubled times, nature still offers moments of wonder and hope.

The word ‘Goit’ intrigued me. According to the English Dialect Dictionary of 1898, it refers to a “small artificial watercourse leading to a mill or reservoir, a mill-race or water-channel the outlet from a stream.”¹“The English Dialect Dictionary, Being the Complete Vocabulary of All Dialect Words Still in Use, or Known to Have Been in Use during the Last Two Hundred Years; Founded on the Publications of the English Dialect Society and on a Large Amount of Material Never before Printed”. In six volumes edited by Joseph Wright, 1898. Volume II. Page 691. Internet Archive, 2014, https://archive.org/details/englishdialectdi02wriguoft. Accessed 10 Apr. 2021. This inlet, though seemingly natural, lies directly below the Huntcliff Ironstone Mine, perched 110 metres above on the cliff edge. Coincidental I think as the railway was in operation at the time of this mine.

From this vantage point, the profile of Huntcliff is striking. The scar and lower portion of the cliff consist of mudstone, while the upper part is crowned by the Cleveland Ironstone Main Seam. On the scar itself, a few fallen boulders rest on shale pedestals, suggesting a slightly higher sea level in the past²Goulding, Denis. “Along the Scar.” November 2001. pp 46-50.

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  “The English Dialect Dictionary, Being the Complete Vocabulary of All Dialect Words Still in Use, or Known to Have Been in Use during the Last Two Hundred Years; Founded on the Publications of the English Dialect Society and on a Large Amount of Material Never before Printed”. In six volumes edited by Joseph Wright, 1898. Volume II. Page 691. Internet Archive, 2014, https://archive.org/details/englishdialectdi02wriguoft. Accessed 10 Apr. 2021.
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  Goulding, Denis. “Along the Scar.” November 2001. pp 46-50