Day 13/Hike Day 11: Ingleby Cross to Clay Bank Top/Great Broughton

"“And the peace which I always found in the silence and emptiness of the moors filled me utterly.” - James Herriot

What a beautiful day for a fabulous hike, with plenty of time to enjoy the peace of the moors and ponder their natural beauty. We were blessed with sunshine all day today as we climbed up, over, and down the hills of North York Moors National Park.

If you're like me and had no idea what the difference is between a moor and a dale, they are essentially the same geographically: dales just have more grass and sheep/cows, while moors are made distinct by the clumps of heather plants that cover their entirity. The moors do at times seem rather desolate, as James Herriot alluded to, but the good kind of desolation, if that makes any sense.

We started off, as normal, with a lovely breakfast: kippers on toast for Kelsey, an omlette for Brian, and delicious homemade bread and jam for both. Our hostess in Ingleby, whose name we somehow neglected to get, was amazing in both her cooking and her knowledge of the trail. She told us we would have fantastic views today, and we sure did.

In pictures today, because I fear words fail the moors entirely:

A neatly groomed manor house at the beginning of the trail

The stablehouse for the manor above

A Highland bull guarding his ladies: fortunately we didn't have to get past this guy!

Before entering the Moors: our legs didn't know what they would be up against today, as the moors looked rather innocent from this vantage point.

We walked through many beautiful old-growth forests today, which are quite rare in this part of England. We enjoyed their shade!

Lush ferns upon our exiting the woods

What looks like a regular old rock cairn was in fact a Bronze Age (2000 BC) burial mound. I'm glad the guidebook mentioned this fact: there was a small plaque but it would have been easy to miss!

Our trail (when it was flat!) en route to the first of our moors

The muted purple heather of the North York Moors

A close-up look at the heather in bloom: it is quite the beautiful plant, even as the blooms are fading. I can only imagine what the moors must look like when it is in full bloom earlier in the summer.

In front of the Wain Stones: peep the rock climbers in the background! This took us a good 5-10 minutes of straight rock scrambling to get through: finally our upper bodies got in a little work on this trip!

Just a couple more cows, grazing atop the moors

If you look off to the left in this photo, you can see what brought us great motivation today: our first glimpse of the sea!

A couple of happy hikers at their lodgings for the night: only two days of hiking left!

It was a very up and down kind of day!

Tomorrow we start with a quick ascent, then a nice gradual downhill the rest of the way. We have plans to stop at a pub along the route for lunch tomorrow, our first "official" lunch stop of the trip. We figured given that we only have two days left, we probably should treat ourselves :-)

Until tomorrow!

Kelsey and Brian

Step Count: 36,145

Miles Hiked Today: 15.23 miles

Elevation: 3,076 ft

Time Hiking: 5 hours, 45 minutes

New UK Breeds Seen Today: Lots of grouse on the moors today! For the uninitiated, they make the weirdest noises and really freaked us out when we were hiking along and they started cackling right next to the trail. Link for grouse cackling here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zfgFY-hgiOk