A Stroll With Stu: From Ravenscar to Robin Hood's Bay, along the Cleveland Way and the Cinder Track - and a cafe or two!

Many people do this along the Cleveland Way, and some via the Cinder Track.

This five-miler combines the two.

It’s been done thousands of times before, including on the telly by a variety of celebs, who usually end up in the tunnel under the village, banging on cellar floors and waxing all lyrical about smugglers and revenue inspectors (you can lengthen the walk significantly by climbing up onto the Cleveland Way at Boggle Hole and doing last month’s walk in reverse).

Since it won’t take much description, I can recommend a bus trip to get to the start at Ravenscar.

Catch the X93 at 0955, and enjoy the fabulous views from the top deck as it climbs nearly 600ft up to the A171.

Coast, fields and eventually open moorland are all there as eye candy, on surely one of the most scenic little rides in the UK.

After 25 minutes, get off at the first stop in Cloughton and cross the road to wait outside the Red Lion.

At 1030 the East Yorkshire Bus service S115 should lumber into view.

This twice a day service (not Sundays) - also operated by a double decker bus on our visit - provides an entertaining dash along tiny lanes, past some stunning houses and little villages, crashing noisily into overhanging trees and startling the starlings as it wends its way through Staintondale to reach Ravenscar 15 minutes later.

Staintondale was a holiday haunt of mine as a youngster and the bus flashes past the old Shepherds Arms pub, which is now a private house (though the stone entrance porch kind of gives away its beery past).

My Mam and Dad would spend an hour or three in here while my brother and I were left with a stash of Superman comics and some sticks of rock in the Camping Coach down at the railway Station.

This was in 1963 (when I was eight and he was 10), so I’m afraid it is now too late to alert Social Services.

Where the bus turns sharp right at Ravenscar, you’ve actually just crossed over the old railway line, but you’d never know as it is in a tunnel beneath your feet (insisted upon by the local landowner who happened to be on the Board of the railway development company).

Get off at the terminus in Station Square (nice café alert) and head towards the sea on a path signposted for the Cleveland Way.

Turn left along the cliff top and soon left again to rejoin the road.

The history of Ravenscar as a proposed resort to rival Scarborough, is worth googling.

It failed largely because it is hundreds of feet down to the beach, something largely ignored by the developers in Victorian times who laid out streets and sewers, but gave up when the first visitors looked way down at the sea and said “You’re having a laugh, mate”.

Turn right, past the entrance drive for the Raven Hall Hotel, then downhill along Peakside (second nice café alert).

You are still on the Cleveland Way, but at the end of a stone wall, jag left to join the Cinder Track near the just visible northern portal of that tunnel.

I should now add that Storm Italiano, or whatever it was called, washed away a section of the track in early August, and if it is not yet repaired you will need to follow the signposted diversions.

The Cinder Track passes quarries and alum works and offers some astonishing views down to the sea, across to Baytown and back to the Raven Hall Hotel.

Follow it for a mile or two, and just ahead of a sturdy stone overbridge, turn right onto a tiny lane that drops steeply down, past some boisterous peacocks at Stoupe Brow Cottage farm, to eventually reach the beach at Stoupe Beck.

If the tide allows, complete the walk along the beach. Otherwise a cliff top option is available via a set of steps that just seem unnecessarily ruthless.

Now, if you are on the beach please keep well away from the cliffs.

I saw lots of little falls of stones which would do nothing for your general health and there was evidence of more extensive falls too.

That didn’t seem to deter people banging holes in the cliffs looking for ammonites and Whitby Jet, suggesting that they probably hadn’t done a risk assessment.

Whichever way you go, pop up to the café at Boggle Hole Youth Hostel for tea and cake at their ever popular café.

It’s a lovely spot to take a little rest before the final mile along the beach or the Cleveland Way back to the fleshpots of Robin Hood’s Bay.