Day Thirteen - Ingleby Cross to Clay Bank Top - 6 May

Time Departed: 9:15am Time Arrived: :30pm Distance: 18.5 kms Cumulative Distance: 247.7kms Percentage Completed: 75% Weather: Sunny in the morning, overcast, cold, snow Accommodation: Dromonby Bridge Farm, Great Broughton The scenery changed quite dramatically today as we entered the North York Moors National Park crossing the Cleveland Hills. We woke up to a frost but as it was a lovely sunny morning the frost quickly disappeared and it wasn’t as cold as predicted. The maximum was nine. We decided to visit the Mount Grace Priory which was near Ingleby Cross and just off the path.

It was well worth the visit incorporating not only the priory but also a manor house which has been refurbished in the Arts and Crafts style of William Morris. The priory was founded in 1398 and is the best preserved of the ten medieval Carthusian (charterhouses) in England. It closed in 1539 during the dissolution of the monasteries by Henry VIII. The path today followed the Cleveland Way and it had quite a few steep ascents and descents along the way. We had lunch when we found two benches overlooking Swainby and the flat plains which we had walked across on the two previous days.

The many yellow paddocks of oilseed rape stood out in the countryside. After lunch we had a long steep climb on mostly flagstones to the summit of Carlton Moor. We could see the sea for the first time overlooking Middlesbrough which was about thirty kilometres away as the crow flies.

We had another brief break at Carlton Moor before descending and ascending to Cringle Moor. In the distance we could see that rain was possibly approaching and we all donned our rain gear.

To our amazement it started to snow. Henk, Neil and I were very excited and as we walked on it got a little heavier. It surprisingly wasn’t cold and unlike rain it was silent. It lasted about ten minutes. When we descended Cringle Moor we decided that we had had enough of the ascents and descents and we found a very muddy parallel path at the bottom of the next moor peaks.

This was about three kilometres long and brought us out to our destination of Clay Bank Top. There is very little accommodation in this area and the five of us were booked into the same B&B at Great Broughton which is about a seven minute drive away. Henk rang the B&B host and he came to pick us up. We were joking that given our muddy boots we hoped he didn’t have a Mercedes Benz car. He turned up in a red one! Thankfully, it was old which was a good thing. He took Ron, Chris and Neil back to the B&B and Henk and I waited for the second car run. The B&B is a very large, rambling house with seven bedrooms accommodating up to sixteen people built in the late eighteen hundreds. Our host took us to a pub at Kirkby and we enjoyed a fabulous Thai meal. It was lovely to have something different from the standard pub meals. Tomorrow is a shorter day as we head deeper into the moors.