I fulfilled a fairly long-held ambition today. Admittedly, walking from Robin Hood's Bay to Whitby is hardly the Appalachian Trail, but it's amazingly beautiful. It was grey, to be sure - but I think it could have been unbearably hot if the sun had emerged.
The scenery was both bucolic and rugged.
Somehow, very few of the descriptions on line mention that it goes up and down a lot (for once, in a few places, I wished I had hiking poles - I was very grateful for a very robust pair of boots.
New bays kept appearing.
There were just enough people on the trail to make it not feel empty and spooky - and all of them filled with English hiking-friendliness. Most were rugged young and middle aged guys; a few tough looking women my age or older; two American ? students also admiring these sheep. I was the only person, so far as I could see, doing the trail in the RHB - Whitby direction, but that was good - I didn't have the ignominy of being overtaken.
One can rent the cottage on which the lighthouse sits! However, it doesn't have internet ...
Eventually, Whitby Abbey came into view, behind the thistles (it looks a bit like Chartres rising above the cornfields),
and eventually - that is, three hours after I started - it was close up!
Beautiful lichen on the wall above St Mary's Church;
then down into the town;
pretty harbor;
and children fishing for crab, in crab-catching plastic buckets.
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