Down To The Beach

I came to a stone seat dedicated to Miss Marijke Bakker, a heritage coast ranger. It seems she was only 28 when she died. The plaque had an inscription 'The girl who gave so much and yet asked for so little in return.'  A fingerpost near to the seat indicated that the 'Headland Way' track went down the cliff to the beach. I followed the zig-zag track through undergrowth and this delivered me to a stony beach.  I made my way over the ankle turning stones to the safety of the sand. I'd followed another walker down the track and saw that he was talking to a young woman  who had been wandering off towards Bempton Cliffs.  There isn't a path back up to the cliffs beyond this point and I guessed he was warning her of that point. The tide was on the turn to go out again and maybe some people might try to venture along the bottom of the cliffs and then get caught out by the tide. Later in the day, I came across a National Coastwatch Institution unit set up on the Filey promenade. They had telescopes trained on Filey Brigg and the beach in front of the holiday parks at Primose Valley and Reighton. I wondered whether they also kept a watch on anybody heading over to the Bempton cliffs area. They'd need pretty good telescopes.

Walking along the beach to Filey, I found the remains of many pill boxes. Obviously, the authorities thought that the flat sands of Filey Bay were a good place for enemy forces to land.

Filey

The beach along Filey Bay was stunning and made for a great walking. It was still fairly early in the day, but a few families had made their way down from Reighton and Primrose Valley, the two holiday villages on the way to Filey. There were some strollers and dog walkers too. Fossil hunters skirted the cliffs and a detectorist was out trying his luck. It didn't seem long before I was climbing up the ramp to Filey's promenade. I have pleasant memories of coming to Filey as a kid and nothing much seems to have changed. The promenade was still a platform for the cafes, ice-cream parlours and snack shops, although some of the owners and brands are undoubtedly different. There's a crazy golf course and a few mini-rides for the youngsters, but it didn't seem to be too overdeveloped. At the northern end of Filey,  near the cobbled ramp, I recognised the boats, amusement arcade and chalets as if it was yesterday, rather than a near half century ago. It was a whistle stop tour along the front, but I'd got Filey Brigg in my sight and I wanted to revisit a persistent memory from my childhood of looking from the top of the cliff and along Filey Brigg. Would it be as impressive now or had time enhanced my memory of it? I climbed to the top of the cliff and headed over to where it dropped down to the peninsula of rocks.

Filey Brigg

It was just  as impressive now as it had been in the 70s. I could see a few people pottering about on the rocks as it stretched out to the sea. Excavations in the area have revealed that Filey Brigg was popular too with our ancestors too. Flint tools 3-4000 years old have been found. A Roman signal station used to stand on the peninsula dating back to the 4th century AD.  It is about halfway along the promontory, although in a few centuries it may be gone. Erosion has removed about two thirds of the site. The signal station was part of a line of 5 up to Huntcliff which is northwards near Saltburn-by-the-Sea. I'd been walking near Saltburn a few days earlier (see Redcar Dead Man's Money) and walked over them in October 2021 (see Saltburn Boulby Rollercoaster).

A bizarre local legend states that the Brigg's rocks are the bones of a dragon. The story says that the locals drowned it when it dived into the sea to wash parkin from between his teeth. It seems unlikely to me, since everybody knows that parkin should only be eaten with a cup of strong Yorkshire tea to wash it down.

Looking northwards I could see the cliffs heading up to Scarborough. Looking southwards across Filey Bay, I could see the cliffs of Bempton. Crikey, they looked far away. This was my turning point on my walk and I headed back along the clifftop to Filey.

Ice-cream Spreadsheets And Boilers

On my outward bound trip along Filey's promenade I'd formed a mental spreadsheet of ice-cream vendor prices from the various establishments. I'd carried out a cost benefit analysis using this data and I settled on a shop selling a vanilla ice-cream cone for £2. It was at the upper end of what I was prepared to pay, but it was a hot day and a long walk, and so I treated myself to one. Very nice it was too.

The beach was much busier in the afternoon. The sea was well out now and so the families who had their encampment near the cliffs had quite a trek if they wanted a paddle.

Nearer to Seepton Cliffs, the retreating tide had revealed a couple of huge metal cylinders on the beach. Later research would reveal that these were sections of a boiler from the Austrian steamship 'Laura'.  It shipwrecked here on the 21st of November 1897 in thick fog after leaving Newcastle with a cargo of coke. They tried to refloat her but eventually she broke in two. The sections of boiler are huge and look quite surreal objects on the beach.

There isn't a sign for the footpath back  to the top of the cliffs. I thought I'd walked past it, but then saw a few rickety wooden steps leading up the cliff. My legs objected to going vertically again after so much time on the flat, but there was nothing for it. There was a great view along Seepton cliffs towards those at Bempton. The air seemed to be alive with what looked like midges around the cliffs. They weren't midges of course, but thousands of birds.

Return To Bempton Cliffs

In the heat, I was getting a bit dehydrated and I'd decided that I'd have an iced lolly at the RSPB Visitor's Centre at Bempton Cliffs. Bugger the cost benefit analysis, I was going to have one. I knew that they shut the centre at 4pm and so I had to walk double-quick time back along the cliffs to Bempton. I got to the Visitor Centre with just 10 minutes to spare.  With relief, I picked up a Solero from the ice-cream cabinet and took it over to the cafe checkout. There were 3 RSPB volunteers behind the counter. One was delivering the order for what looked like a family of 12, another looked despondently into the middle distance and the final one chatted with an old friend over the counter and refused to make eye contact with me. My Solero was gradually turning into a puddle in its wrapper and I obviously needed an alternative strategy, and so I took it across to the gift shop checkout. 'You can't pay for that here. You need to pay for it over there' announced the assistant and she pointed to another till that was a couple of strides away. Such was my urgency, I fulfilled her request with one stride. The Solero was a hefty £2.50  and I gave her a £2 and a £1 coin. 'We don't accept them, they could be forgeries' she handed the £1 coin back to me. I took my rucksack off my back, got my wallet out and retrieved another £1 coin. I compared the new one with the alleged forgery and couldn't see any difference. I handed it over and she gave me a 50p coin back. Amazingly the 50p coin had a gouge from its outer edge to its middle through which you could see daylight. I couldn't believe that my money had been refused and yet I'd been given this shard of metal as change. The audacity of it! I was about to refuse to take it when I felt the slosh of slush in my Solero wrapper. I sighed and popped the damaged 50p piece into their RSPB collection container.  'Thank you' said the smiling assistant cheerfully.

From personal experience, Soleros are better served cold than hot. Afterwards, I had a further wander around Bempton Cliffs (see RSPB Bempton Cliffs). It was an amazing day with lots of wildlife and stunning scenery. A very memorable walk.