454 Skinningrove Description and Information | Walks on the Yorkshire and Cleveland Coasts

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454 Skinningrove Description and Information

Written by the Wanderlust Team

Sunday, 10 February 2008

This may just be a coast walk

Distance: Four miles.

General Location: Coast south of Teesside.

Start: Skinningrove.

Right of Way: All public.

Dogs: Legal.

Date walked: Friday 14 October 2005.

Road Route: From York, the A19, A172, A173 to Guisborough, then A171 Whitby road c7 miles, left turn signed ‘Liverton, Loftus, Skinningrove’.

Car Parking: Free car park by sea at Skinningrove, down Marine Terrace and Chapel Street.

Map: Drawn from OS Explorer 27 North York Moors eastern area.

Lavatories: None.

Refreshments: Kilton Arms pub and intermittent café.

Tourist & Public Transport Information: Tom Leonard Mining Museum open Monday to Saturday 1 April until 31 October 1pm – 3.45 p.m, Sundays in high season. November to March pre-booked parties only. Tel: 01287 642877. Website: www.ironstonemuseum.co.uk.

Terrain: Cliff edge and hinterland.

Points of interest: Industrial archaeology.

Difficulty: Easy, 600 foot of climbing.

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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Skinningrove is not like Runswick, Staithes or Robin Hood’s Bay. Seaside it may be, but despite the fishing cobbles it’s not pretty with pantiles and oozing ice cream and romantic history, though nowadays there’s a mining museum. The place is very interesting, stylish even if not elegant, a characterful survivor of its ironstone heyday, the low terraces of miners' houses, the precipitous shanty towns of pigeon lofts, the beck that runs rust red. And a good start for some cliff walking.

We climbed the Cleveland Way to said cliffs and then it was just the North Sea, tranquil at high tide, the horizon sharp between pale and grey blues and small waves hissing. A hundred seagulls arrived and then moved on. There was an inappropriate pheasant on the cliff edge.

Look inland and there are fields. Look ahead and there are very high jagged cliffs. Look back, not much, not yet, there’s time for that.

After an hour we’d hit our high spot 800 feet above the sea, a point extra invigorating for an amphitheatre of abandoned quarry. Perched on a wall we looked north, to half of Hartlepool 15 miles away and then a terrific distance up the tapering Durham coast, but this not a guaranteed view, any haze would close it out.

A birdwatcher said he’d seen two yellow-browed warblers, and that they only come this time of the year on the easterlies from Siberia, rare visitors, they look like goldcrests.

After the cliffs the second half of this route is not so spectacular but it’s alright. Some very quiet back road, a few field edges, sight of valley villages, a bench, a terrace of mining houses and then a good overview of Skinningrove. We stood under the three-phase power by a well-ordained communications mast and listened to the steel works across the valley emitting intermittent metallic sounds. Then after skirting a zone of horsetails, the primitive plants not animal appendages, we were down.

The mining museum is clearly well worth a visit, for the one and a half-hour guided underground tours. If I were doing this walk/visit again I’d start early, have lunch then get subterranean. We wandered the village, found some old houses and buildings, especially the tall pub that has long been called Timm’s Coffee House but has no history of coffee.

Image Gallery

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