The next morning looked unpromising; the heavy rain which began to fall the evening before had continued all night, and when I started, trees and hedges were still dripping and the grass drooping, overburdened with watery beads. Bye-paths are not enticing under such circumstances: however, the range of cliffs between Haiburn Wyke and Robin Hood’s Bay is so continuously grand and lofty that I made up my mind to walk along their summit whether or not.
About half an hour from Cloughton brought me to a ‘crammle gate,’ as the natives call it; that is, a rustic gate with zigzaggy rails, from which a private road curves down through a grove to a farm-house on the right. Here, finding no outlet, I had to inquire, and was told to cross the garden. All praise to the good-nature which trusts a stranger to lift the “clinking latch” and walk unwatched through a garden so pretty, teeming with fruit, flowers, and vegetables; where a path overarched by busy climbers leads you into pleasing ins and outs, and along blooming borders to the edge of a wooded glen, and that is Haiburn Wyke. The path, not trimly kept as in the garden, invites you onwards beneath a thick shade of oak, ash, and hazel; between clumps of honeysuckle and wild roses, and broken slopes hung with ferns and ivy, and a very forest of grasses; while, to heighten the charm, a little brook descends prattling confidingly to the many stones that lie in its crooked channel. The path winds, now steep, now gradual, and at the bends a seat offers a resting-place if you incline to pause and meditate.
There was another charm: at first a fitful murmur which swelled into a roar as I sauntered down and came nearer to the sea. The trees grow so thickly that I could see but a few yards around, and there seemed something almost awful in the sound of the thundering surge, all the heavier in the damp air, as it plunged on the rugged beach: so near, and yet unseen. But after another bend or two it grows lighter overhead, crags peep through the foliage on both sides, and then emerging on a level partly filled by a summer-house, you see the narrow cove, the jutting cliffs that shelter it, and every minute the tumultuous sea flinging all round the stony curve a belt of quivering foam.
I could not advance far, for the tide had but just begun to fall; however, striding out as far as possible, I turned to look at the glen. It is a charming scene: the leafy hollow, the cliffs rounding away from the mantling green to present a bare front to the sea, yet patched and streaked with gray and yellow and white and brown, as if to make up for loss of verdure. There the brook, tumbling over stony ledges, shoots into a cascade between huge masses of rock, and hurries still with lively noise across the beach, talking as freely to boulders of five tons’ weight as to stones of a pound; heedless, apparently, that its voice will soon be drowned for ever in the mighty voice of the sea. It is a charming scene, truly, even under a gloomy sky: you will see none fairer on all the coast. On a sunshiny day it should attract many visitors from Scarborough, when those able to walk might explore Cloughton Wyke—less beautiful than this—on the way.
To get up the steep clay road all miry with the rain on the northern side of the glen, was no easy task; but the great ball of clay which clung to each of my feet was soon licked off by the wet grass in the fields above. I took the edge of the cliffs, and found the ascent to the Staintondale summit not less toilsome. There was no path, and wading through the rank grass and weeds, or through heavy wheat and drenched barley on ground always up-hill, wetted me through up to the hips in a few minutes, and gave me a taste of work. For the time I did not much admire the Yorkshire thriftiness which had ploughed and sown so close to the bank leaving no single inch of space. However, I came at times to a bare field or a pasture, and the freshening breeze blew me almost dry before climbing over awkward fences for another bath of weeds and grain. And besides, a few faint watery gleams of sunshine began to slant down upon the sea, and the increasing height of the cliffs opened wide views over land and water—from misty hills looming mountainous on one side, to the distant smoke of a coasting steamer on the other. And again there are two or three miles of undercliff, a great slope covered with a dense bush threaded here and there by narrow paths, and forming in places an impenetrable tangle. To stand on the highest point, five hundred and eighty-five feet above the sea, and look down on the precipitous crags, the ridges and hollows and rounded buttresses decked with the mazy bush where birds without number haunt, is a sight that repays the labour. At the corner of one of the fields the bushes lean inwards so much from the wind, that the farmer has taken advantage of the overshoot to construct a bower wherein to sit and enjoy the prospect.
These tall cliffs are the sudden termination of a range of hills stretching from the interior to the coast. Taken with the undercliff, they present many combinations which would delight the eye and employ the pencil of an artist. And to the geologist they are of abounding interest, exhibiting shale, shelly limestone, sandstones of various qualities in which belemnites and ferns, and other animal and vegetable fossils, are embedded in surprising quantities. You can descend here and there by a zigzag path, and look up at the towering crags, or search the fallen masses, or push into the thicket; that is, in dry weather. After about two miles the bush thins off, and gives place to gorse, and reedy ponds in the hollows, and short turf on which cattle and sheep are grazing.
The range continues for perhaps five miles and ends in a great perpendicular bluff—a resort of sea-birds. Here on getting over the fence I noticed that the pasture had a well-kept, finished appearance; and presently, passing the corner of a wall, I found myself on a lawn, and in front of Raven Hall—a squire’s residence. An embrasured wall built to represent bastions and turrets runs along the edge of the cliff, and looking over, you see beneath the grand sweep of Robin Hood’s Bay backed by a vast hollow slope—a natural amphitheatre a league in compass, containing fields and meadows, shaly screes and patches of heath, cottages, and the Peak alum-works. We are on the Peak, and can survey the whole scene, away to Bay Town, a patch of red capped by pale-blue smoke just within the northern horn of the bay.
A lady and gentleman were trying in defiance of the wind to haul up a flag on the tall staff erected at the point, to whom I apologised for my unintentional trespass. They needed no apology, and only wondered that any one should travel along the cliffs on such a morning. “Did you do it for pleasure?” asked the lady, with a merry twinkle in her eye, as she saw how bedraggled I looked below the knees.
The gentleman left the flapping banner, and showed me from the rear of the premises the readiest way down to the beach—a very long irregular descent, the latter portion across the alum shale, and down the abrupt slope of Cinder Hill, where the buildings are blackened by smoke. At first the beach is nothing but a layer of small fragments of shale, of a dark slate-colour, refuse from the works; and where the cliffs reappear there you see shale in its natural condition, and feel it beneath your feet while treading on the yielding sand. Numerous cascades leap down from these cliffs; at the time I passed swollen by the rain, and well set off by the dark precipice. One of them was a remarkably good representation of the Staubbach on a small scale.
About half way I met a gig conveying visitors to the Hall at a walking pace, for the wheels sank deep. It was for them that the flag was to be raised, as a signal of welcome; and looking back I saw it flying proudly, on what, seen from below, appeared a castle on the cliff. At this moment the sun shone out, and lit up the Peak in all its magnificent proportions; and the effects of my trudge through drip and mire soon disappeared. Another mile and the rocks are thickly strewn with periwinkles, and great plashy beds of seaweed must be crossed, and then we see that the outermost houses rest on a solid weather-stained wall of boulders, through which descends a rugged incline of big stones—the foot of the main street of Bay Town.