Cliff top walk from Staithes to Runswick Bay

While to the south and west the sky was covered in cloud, this part of the Yorkshire coast stayed sunny for most of our walk. The bay in the background is Port Mulgrave, a former industrial site, where iron ore was loaded onto ships to be transported for ship building on the Tyne (see Port Mulgrave )

It's quite a while since we last did this walk, so it felt good to be back. I'm not sure that we've ever done it before in August and it was amazing to see the fields of golden wheat glowing in the sun. The flowers along the cliff top were very lovely, mostly Yarrow, Knapweed and Hawkweed but also Harebells, Ladies Mantle and yellow and purple vetch. There must have been far more rain here than we've had at home where the roadside verges are now so dry and bereft of flowers.

On our drive across from Danby we'd stopped at the churchyard in Roxby, which is famous for its iron gravestones. It also contains `Momento Mori' stones which have remained something of a fascination every since we saw a very special one in a graveyard in South West Scotland (it looked a little like a `pirate' gravestone - I must look out the photograph and scan it!) Gravestone - Roxby Churchyard The churchyard also had quite a flock of adolescent pheasants running around, which were quite amusing, while on the overhead wires the swallow families were gathering. Not long now before they will be off in their pursuit of a warmer climate leaving us to the likes of Jet2 if we want to do the same!