451 Ravenscar Description and Information | Walks on the Yorkshire and Cleveland Coasts

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451 Ravenscar Description and Information

Written by the Wanderlust Team

Friday, 30 November 2007

Sea for miles

Distance: Seven and a half miles.

General Location: North of Scarborough.

Start: Gates of Raven Hall Hotel.

Right of Way: The complete route is along public rights of way.

Dogs: Legal.

Date walked: Saturday 24 October 2005.

Road Route: From the A171.

Car Parking: Roadside at Ravenscar.

Lavatories: Opposite National Trust Centre at Ravenscar.

Refreshments: Ravenscar Hotel. Seasonal café.

Tourist & Public Transport Information: Scarborough TIC 01723 373333.

Map: Based on OS Explorer OL27 North York Moors eastern area.

Terrain: Moor, farmland and disused railway line.

Points of interest: For details on Woodland Trust woods, www.woodland-trust.org.uk.

Difficulty: Fairly flat.

Please observe the Country Code and park sensibly. While every effort is made to provide accurate information, walkers set out at their own risk.

Please click the image below to go to the walking route sketch map and detailed directions, or scroll down to a Google Map of the route, the route description, and an image gallery. Plus you can bookmark this page on your favourite social bookmarking site, and comment on the walk. We hope you enjoy the walk.

Googlemap

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Ravenscar was just the place for an Indian Summer Saturday with loads of walkers lounging on the green of this ‘the village that never was’; ‘just the ticket’ said one. It’s worth a wander around this strange place to see where they laid the drains etc back in the 1890s but got no further in their plans for the ‘most bracing health resort on the east coast’.

At the National Trust Coastal Centre there was a display on the alum mining here, possibly Britain’s first industry. The stuff was used for fixing dyes to fabrics. Apparently Henry VIII made a law ‘banning poor people from wearing brightly coloured clothes’, which, should it be reintroduced, would hit walkers hard in their Gore-Tex glow, not that I’m suggesting we are all on our uppers, too broke to bike.

The road offered an easy way out of Ravenscar, the cliffs here are 600 feet so the gently rising pavement and cul-de-sac offered quarter of an hour’s worth of super views along the coast to Robin Hood’s Bay, the famous fishing village a few miles away, a drift of sails on flat sea, cumulus clouds settled in blue sky.

Then came the moor, a trig point at 266m and a nice open access welcome sign from the North York Moors National Park Authority. The route across the moor is now a remarkably straight track, so it was a simple crossing with to one side Helwath Grains, mostly heather dusty with its purple faded, and to the other side a swathe of golden grass.

High above a fluid chevron of geese flew against the sun, headed Flamborough way. There are a couple of skyline prehistoric mounds called Stony Marl Howes and there was a good crop of mushrooms.

Stage three of the walk was a jink down into a pastoral landscape with delicate harebells and a place called The Ranch that has a collection of massive anvils, then there's a place called Spring Hill where to judge by a lorry so labelled they sell the water, and as an optional extra there’s a Woodland Trust wood called Harry's Folly.

Then we crunched acorns down a bit of back road, admired fuschia hedge in Cornish style and reached the last leg, the dismantled railway line.

There are two and a half miles on this, an hour’s worth at decent speed up the negligible one in forty gradient. We were out on a weekend, so there was human interest, and you know how it is, despite oneself, when there are others there's a tendency to keep pace if not to race. So we zoomed through the cuttings, only a ‘Hells Granny’ on a mountain bike faster and she downhill, and we slowed less than was appropriate when the views appeared to Robin Hood’s Bay, lured to the finish by the towering Raven Hall Hotel where they do good coffee.

Image Gallery

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