Saltburn

It drizzled all day so I went for a short walk on Huntcliff and dropped in at the chippy on the way back. Views were in short supply.

Skinningrove

Probably the last sunny day I shall have here, so I walked southwards along the cliff top to the ironstone museum at Skinningrove. It seemed like the perfect destination after two days of wondering what happened the local industry that had built so many railway lines. (I have other lines of enquiry too: the Staithes artists . . . is there a bus, I wonder?)

All I knew about Skinningrove was from Chris Killip’s 1980s photographs, so before I came to Saltburn I had assumed it was purely a fishing village. I’m pretty sure I didn’t notice any blast furnaces in the background. For not only did Skinningrove have Cleveland’s first ironstone mine (1848-1958, with troughs and peaks in production) but also a steel mill with several blast furnaces. And it’s still there. Well, not exactly – but British Steel (in its current unBritish reincarnation) is still there – and that’s what I took to be enormous cattle sheds on my way in. Aerial photographs (from the 1950s and today) show that the messiness of the industry has been tidied away (or swept under the carpet to far-flung corners of the world). The viaducts, the aerial wires, the railway jetty, the smoke, the noise . . . all gone. What’s left – I discovered – are the slightly blacker cliffs on the west side of Skinningrove where the spoil from the mine was dumped; the nesting fulmars seemed happy enough with it.

So it was unexpectedly fascinating. I joined the tour (fortunately it was a drift rather than a shaft entrance) and learned lots. Surface ironstone had been gathered and smelted in bloomeries for centuries. What was mined here contained 25-30% iron; Australian and South African mines could boast double that, so it wasn’t an industry that was going to survive. The Cleveland ironstone industry brought miners and their families from all over Britain. It was never a nationalised industry: miners were paid for what they produced, and out of that they paid the man who acted as their filler – carrying the ironstone to the tubs on horse-drawn railways. Because the seams of ironstone were so thick, the mine galleries were high and wide, allowing draught horses to be used. To mine ironstone gunpowder was used. (Ironstone is very heavy, as I discovered.) Ventilation was essential: originally steam-powered, but later electric. I discovered that the ruined building I had noticed beside the freight railway line (yes, the one that goes over Saltburn viaduct) was actually the ventilation shaft for the Huntcliff mine.

A brilliant day. Oh, and the walk there and back was enjoyable too.

Redcar

Today I thought I might see some more industrial relics, but they are all being/have been demolished. What I saw on the horizon yesterday is something else as the old steelworks at Redcar is now a playground for diggers. Instead, I had a day of skylarks, kestrels, turnstones and unidentified little brown birds amongst the gorse as I walked north-east along the coast.

And more mud.

On my return (by train from Redcar), I explored a little more of Saltburn, walked to the end of the pier and spent 20p on the Penny Falls – yielding me a return of 2p.

Guisborough

. . . has a priory. Open on Sundays but on none of the other days I can do. I like a good ruin, so I pooh-poohed the weather forecast and set off to follow the Cleveland Way towards Guisborough.

On the way out I admired the handsome Victorian and Edwardian villas and compared them to the Jugendstil buildings that Germans would have built in a similar position; it made me realise what a stranglehold the Arts and Crafts movement and neo-Gothic/neo-Tudor/Italianate had on English taste. Along the Valley Gardens beside Skelton Beck, admiring the wood anemones but cautious on the muddy sloping path. Saltburn Viaduct – still in use, I think – was wonderful. The drizzle set in as I approached Skelton and my path was blocked by housing estates under construction. It was a dreary detour to find the path again and I was disinclined to come back the same way, whatever the weather. At Skelton Green I discovered a bus stop boasting an hourly Sunday bus to Saltburn, so that was to be my answer.

Airy Hill Lane – a muddy bridleway – would have been monotonous had it not been for the singing skylarks everywhere. I could have done with more of that monotony on the descent to the A road at Slapewath though: the bridleway became a very steep and slippery footpath as if someone had poured sump oil down it. Fortunately it was stepped and I had my poles, which I clung to like a crucifix. Then a disused railway line (this area has loads) into Guisborough itself and a wonderful view of the east end as I entered via the back route.

The Augustinian priory was founded in the early 12th century; there’s little left today but it is a pleasant site and the gardens are well maintained. After a look around and my sandwich I headed back towards the Skelton Green bus stop a slightly different way – another disused railway line of gloopy, slidy chocolate cream. Towards the end the sun came out to add a sheen to the puddles.

I was glad to visit the priory; the fact that it drizzled for much of the day didn’t bother me, and I survived the hazardous surfaces. I didn’t even get mucky! What remains of the day though is not ecclesiastical or rural but very definitely industrial. That railway viaduct over Saltburn Beck made me think again of Dombey and Son:

The earth was made for Dombey and Son to trade in, and the sun and moon were made to give them light. Rivers and seas were formed to float their ships; rainbows gave them promise of fair weather; winds blew for or against their enterprises; stars and planets circled in their orbits, to preserve inviolate a system of which they were the centre.

and

Dombey and Son know neither time, nor place, nor season, but bear them all down.

and this – a difficult concept for me, who see railways as freedom personified:

The power that forced itself upon its iron way – its own – defiant of all paths and roads, piercing through the heart of every obstacle, and dragging living creatures of all classes, ages, and degrees behind it, was a type of the triumphant monster, Death.

But I did get a small sense of that once I had marvelled at the elegant brick piers arising out of the ashlar masonry of the viaduct and I thought about that monstrous strength of purpose that insists on overcoming all obstacles – here, like the Belah viaduct, a little stream at the bottom of a deep valley. All this so that a railway could be built to the mines and provide yet more fodder for industrialisation.

As well as the disused railway lines, the layout of some of the villages spoke of their mining and quarrying past – short rows of urban-looking Victorian or Edwardian terraces at the back of beyond. A stream called Alumwork Beck. You can also see the outline of the old Redcar steelworks on the horizon – my destination for tomorrow, I think.

Saltburn

So here I am in Saltburn, beside a proper sea (none of your estuary nonsense). The wind is currently howling round my corner plot and the weather changes from sunny to showery without a moment’s thought – which may be the watermark of my stay here. I like it all, despite the decidedly iffy weather forecast, and am looking forward to exploring somewhere new.

The journey was interesting as the train to Leeds acquired more and more young people in fancy dress. Star Wars characters, Marvel superheroes, Dennis the Menace et al joined at each station, and at Skipton I finally removed my rucksack from the seat beside me to accommodate a young man in a halter-top lurex jumpsuit. (His friend in the Dolly Parton outfit hadn’t bothered to wax his legs, I noticed.) I felt dreadfully po-faced and elderly at finding it stale rather than amusing – but I didn’t have their leavening of alcohol and high spirits to endear it to me. However it wasn’t as rowdy as it might have been (think football fans or a hen party) and I clocked it as a reminder that travelling at the weekend has its drawbacks to a staid mindset.

After a coffee in Leeds, I continued by train to Saltburn – noteworthy only for the increasingly urgent announcements from the train guard about the perils of platform descents. Apparently Yarm (if I remember correctly) has a slipperier-than-usual platform. Should I ever get out at Yarm, I will ensure that I’m wearing crampons.

Until the lurex jumpsuit impinged on my consciousness, I had been mulling over how much I have always felt positive about being on the move – from the back seat of Dad’s car as a child (despite my lifelong travel sickness) watching the rise and fall of the telegraph wires as we sped along the road to the delight of settling myself comfortably on my saddle, resting my weight on the handlebars and pushing off with my right (never my left) foot to somewhere new. Always somewhere new. I had been thinking of

that untravell’d world whose margin fades 

For ever and forever when I move.

and my visceral revulsion against unvaryingness . . . when the banality of fancy dress rather diverted my thoughts.

Anyway: Saltburn. Small, clifftop, grid pattern, one of those places which is becoming a “destination”. Some elements that would still be recognisable to my parents: the clifftop tram was a lovely surprise, as was the pier. The instagrammable restaurant, where I had a lovely late lunch, less so – but pleasant to me (not least because of the wonderful Soave).

And because of the wonderful view of the North Sea waves and the fact that I was re-reading Dombey and Son as I ate. It’s a book that makes a metaphor of the sea – its refusal to submit to man-made rules and its eternal cycle of ebbing and flowing/life and death. It’s a mood that is at complete variance with today’s fancy-dress revellers.

Hull

A day that wasn’t what I’d hoped for – half of the Ferens art gallery was closed, the fish restaurant I remembered so fondly was closed for holidays and several trains were cancelled – but enjoyable nonetheless.

Paragon station was once so grand: I snuck into the interior (which now seems to have no real function) to admire the space and tiling. The station hotel next door, where once in the last century we had breakfast after an overnight ferry from Europoort, is long closed. And, with the more modern half of the gallery closed, the Ferens also offered a backward look to past grandeurs.

Which was fine by me. I remembered the early paintings and the Dutch collection (minus the Hals, which is out on loan) from my previous visit, but this time I looked at the Victorians. John Atkinson Grimshaw was there, of course, and I noticed a saccharine Perugini, which reminded me of a painting in Manchester that hasn’t been on display for many years. They are both charmingly “blah”, but I like them and enjoy deconstructing them. The three women: the Three Graces, the Hesperides guarding the gold shuttlecock – or just a trio of pretty Victorian maidens who mustn’t get their muslins wet? The same with the reader: virtuous, in white with a sprig of orange blossom, focussed on her book (probably an “improving” one), ignoring the ripe fruit by her side and her back turned on the dark thicket behind her. And so well executed – how can it not charm? And amuse by its obviousness.

Studley Royal

Today’s train strike has brought me to Leeds a day early and so gave me the opportunity of turning my vague thought of visiting St Mary’s Church at Studley Royal into reality. The church, designed by William Burges in full-on Gothic revival style, was commissioned by the Marquess and Marchioness of Ripon in the 1870s in memory of the death (while being rescued from brigands in Greece) of her brother, Frederick Vyner. I had seen the Vyner memorial window by Burne-Jones in Oxford and been told that the church was worth visiting.

We-ell – perhaps not to the extent of four hours on a bus from Leeds to get there and back. It was fascinating that the church appeared to be all spire from the avenue, but once you reached it you discovered the horizontals. Inside, though, it seemed cramped somehow. It would have been wonderful to go inside the polychromatic chancel, but – understandably – it was roped off.

There were other attractions too – the wonderfully twisted trunks of mature sweet chestnut trees, deer, and the sight of Ripon Cathedral at the end of the long avenue from St Mary’s. My goodness – the way you can play with the landscape when the land is all yours! It prompted me to step inside the cathedral before I caught the bus back. I had forgotten the mismatched piers at the crossing: the reason is that the rebuilding of the tower was unfinished at the time the canons were dissolved by Edward VI. Petrified history.

Re the proliferation of tree photos: yesterday evening I watched a documentary on Georgia O’Keeffe and her stunning displays of biomorphic forms and swirls, initially in charcoal. The morning’s drawing class had probably also made me more aware of what I was seeing.

From Hull to Hedon

After breakfast a short walk to Hull Minster, where I noticed that the road leading to the church was full of religious institutions.

Then to Hedon, whose name rang bells loudly enough for me to recall finally a visit a couple of years ago to visit the church of St Augustine. This was a different journey: instead of a coach, we cycled along the estuary to the docks; it’s been about 20 years since I last did this and the number of new houses on old industrial land has multiplied enormously. At the docks we took the cycle path towards Hedon but then allowed ourselves to be hijacked by a cyclist who was heading there on the path beside the horrendous main road. It was a very different experience to arrive by the kind of road we normally avoid, so to discover that Hedon centre was actually picturesque (and had a perfect little café) was a relief. For the journey back to the port we followed an unmade disused railway line: much trickier cycling but so much pleasanter and shadier than our outward route.

And now the ferry is slowly heading out from King George Dock and taking us to the Netherlands once again.

Hull

Up at 5 a.m. to catch the first train to Leeds and then a speedy dash for the Hull train. A second breakfast in Queen Victoria Square and the decision to cycle along a disused railway line to the coast at Hornsea. Which didn’t happen. It became too tiresome cycling in a dead straight line into a headwind in a featureless landscape, and when the path became unmade it was a relief to detour to Burton Constable Hall and its welcome tea room.

I am so contrary! We are heading to the Netherlands and Germany to cycle in largely car-free routes, but give me a car-free route in England and I complain that it is tiresome and am glad to cycle on roads again.

Tonight it’s a hotel at Hull’s marina. No opportunity to explore the city, and this morning’s early start is going to be mirrored by an early night.

Skipton

An impromptu trip to Skipton to return an online order. (I don’t care if that’s not the way it’s supposed to work.) The return took 5 minutes, so I headed to Skipton Woods for a walk before returning to the station. Coronation Day was marked by recorded platform announcements by the new king and queen. There were also quite a few tipsy people about, but that may just be a normal Saturday in Skipton.