C2C – Day 14: Friday 15 April – INGLEBY CROSS to CLAY BANK TOP (13 miles)
Let’s start today with a thank you, to Jane at Ingleby House Farm, for a wonderful breakfast and for supporting our C2C walk and Parkinson’s UK. Thank you, and for a comfortable night’s stay in Engleby, which roughly translated from the nordic means ‘village of the Englishmen’. We certainly felt very much at home.
Today we climbed up into our third National Park, the North York Moors. Alone on the trail we made good time up through the forest in the cool of the morning to the staccato sound of woodpeckers. Presently these woods gave way to a moorland footpath, where our approach was greeted by the song of skylarks, and by the scuttling of several common lizards.
. . . and looking along the top of the scarps
What we hadn’t quite realised, on perusing the maps last night, was that our initial climb today was to be only the first of five significant ascents, totalling 910 metres. In terms of the aggregate climb this placed our day’s walk second only to our mammoth trek out of the Lakes from Patterdale.
After our descent to Clay Bank Top we hailed our lift down to The Buck Inn at Chop Gate from landlord Wolfgang. Here we met our old friends Rick and Eleanor, and we were guided through an excellent range of German beers, followed by schnitzel for dinner.
Walking for Fun, Challenge and Charity! 