Walking the Yorkshire coast

Walking the Yorkshire coast from the Humber to the Tees

Is it possible?

There isn’t yet an officially designated walk over the full uninterrupted length (although the Cleveland Way/ King Charles III England Coast Path follows part of it) so I set myself the challenge of finding a route between the Humber and the Tees following cliff paths and beaches. Dividing it up into manageable sections, totalling approximately 124 miles, the aim being to make it a series of enjoyable walks rather than an arduous route march such that, when completed, it would give me the satisfaction of saying, ‘I have walked the Yorkshire coast’.

I divided the coast into 15 separate walks varying between 3 to 12 miles and each was comfortably completed within a day. Spreading the walks over several months, I didn’t want to approach the challenge as a route march and I didn’t have the time to dedicate a couple of weeks to complete the whole route in one go. However, to give the challenge a bit of structure, I started by first symbolically dipping my boot in the Humber and completed the section from Redcar last with the same ritual boot dipping in the Tees. The sections in between were undertaken in no particular order other than leaving the longer sections for later when my fitness level was higher!

I feel a walking holiday would be a tremendous way of undertaking the walk or parts of it. Needless to say, there is plenty of accommodation along the way.

Footpaths were identified by reference to Ordnance Survey maps which are available as overlays on bing.com/maps and distances were calculated using gb.mapometer.com. Navigation is not difficult although part of the footpath around Scarborough has been lost to erosion and an ad hoc diversion had to be found using a bit of common sense!

Click on the map or menu for further details of individual walks and photos of my journey.

(All the photos are mine so please contact me if you want to reproduce any - thanks)