464 Filey Description and Information | Walks on the Yorkshire and Cleveland Coasts

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464 Filey Description and Information

Written by the Wanderlust Team

Friday, 30 November 2007

Just don't mention you've brought prawn sandwiches

Distance: Six and a half miles.

General Location: Near Scarborough.

Start: South carpark.

Right of Way: Public.

Dogs: Legal.

Map: Drawn from OS Explorer 300 Scarborough, Bridlington & Flamborough.

Date walked: Friday 9 December 2005.

Road Route: From York, A64 and A1039.

Car Parking: Large car park at south edge of town, signed. Winter free.

Lavatories: Yes.

Refreshments: Plenty. Pubs, inns and cafes.

Tourist & Public Transport Information: Scarborough Tourism Bureau 01723 383636.

Terrain: Mostly coastline.

Points of interest: Check tide times online.

Difficulty: Moderate

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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Filey is a place with a big image but a small permanent population and there weren’t many of them around on a bitter winter’s day. Certainly no day-trippers, ours was the only metal in the big car park of swirling mist. Worried about the weather we had phoned a shop before travelling and had been led to expect a ‘nice bright day’, a chance of the ‘breathtaking views of Flamborough Head’. The first of the town’s many info boards shivered with the pre-history of ice ages.

We warmed up along a road of local brick stacked three storeys high as B&B, Guest House and Holiday Let, café and fish and chips. At Church Ravine and its iron bridge there was more info, that this ravine pre-1889 divided the Ridings North and East and that the inhabitants here are collectively Filonians which sounds quite musical.

At noon, at the town edge fields the sun started a battle with the murk, brightening the delayed gratification of the coast.

The cliffs are high and steep, hundreds of feet, striated rock ledged with seagulls and below a grey of shale. The sea was empty, shadowed by a breeze, the horizon blurred and at the rocks a wash of falling tide. A cormorant skimmed the surface. A lone walker strode, a male multi-tasking a novel no less. We moved west, slightly downhill, stopping to puzzle at the Filey Rocket Pole - a thing for practising rescues in times gone by. A regularity of red signs ‘Beware Dangerous Cliffs’ are posted over slumps of clay. A wedge of sandstone is carved with ‘Cleveland Way’ and ‘Wolds Way’.

Soon we were on the Brigg, one of the most distinctive headlands on the North East coast, a spike a mile in length at low tide. Some way onto it the Brigg drops down from quite a height to almost sea level, and from here you have to retreat. There is a way down, a curve of engineered path and then, but only if the tide is right out, a ribbon of undulating and weathered concrete leads to the end.

All the way, fifty yards of rock hopping included, and you reach Brigg End, the cold sea lapping or crashing on the very last rock. This is a special place of seaweeds, sculpted stone and jewelled pools. A birdwatcher told me the cormorants were shags and I saw small waders, probably purple sandpipers. There’s a telephone should you be stranded by incoming tide, but don’t, please.

I walked back off the Brigg, off the crunchy litter of oystercatcher emptied mussel shells and onto the miles of smooth wet light mirrored hard packed sands. Some locals hurried hunched. You are allowed a salty dog in empty winter months, but not in child humming summer. A slipway to the sea wall was a slope of fishing boats, and along the half mile of wall - life boat, loos, deck chair hire, WW 2 mine, coast guard station bristling with aerials and a giant metal lobster brandishing black claws.

The end of the sea wall brought a shuttered sea front café and a ravine back up to town where you can enter aromatic warmth and get a typical extra welcome cup of tea.

Image Gallery

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