I've just completed the first of what will probably be eleven stages of the Cleveland Way national trail... by treadmill. As with my recent Pembrokeshire Coast Path walk, I plot the route on my PC, then watch the way unfold before me using Google Street View on the treadmill.
The Cleveland Way is about 110 miles in length and I've decided to do it in 10 mile sections. Today, I started in Helmsley and ended somewhere to the east of Boltby. Perhaps, like me, you had no idea where these places are (or even where the trail is located), so I'd better explain that the Cleveland Way does a sort of horseshoe route around the outside of the North York Moors National Park with the second half (when going clockwise as I am) heading south along the coast between Saltburn-by-the-Sea to just past Scarborough.
It took me a while to find the stone sculpture by the car park in Helmsley that marks the start/finish of the Cleveland Way:
I know it's early days yet, but I was a bit underwhelmed by today's section - there being little difference between this and any of a million other walks in the English countryside. If I'd arrived home after this walk and my wife had asked if I'd enjoyed it, I'd probably have said, "It was okay, thanks."
There were three distinct parts. Early on, the path went around field boundaries and through narrow sections of woodland...
...then it spent a good two or three miles on tarmac - pleasant enough, but nothing special - and I went through just the one village, Cold Kirby.
The best part of the walk was the last bit, where the views opened up towards the west. From Helmsley, the path gained height steadily, though never steeply, and the views were the reward! The area where I took the photo below is in the Sutton Bank National Park Centre where there's a big car park and there were a lot of people around admiring the views.
Tomorrow's walk will take me north to just beyond Osmotherley...