Over the moor

A lift up from the walker-friendly Wainstones Hotel in Great Broughton took me to the end of yesterday’s hike and the start of today’s at Clay Bank Top. A stiff climb up now very familiar roughly paved steps opened out onto the vast Urra Moor which was to be with me for the next four hours. A sea of heather, a dark burnt sienna at this time of year, and grey skies with hazy mist curtaining the distance, my way ahead clear along sandy tracks, I soon slipped into an almost meditative state, physically alert for each footfall and breath but mindfully quiet, startled occasionally by grouse rising up from the heather with their staccato alarm calls. 
The moor has an ancient solitude, darkly brooding and unforgiving, tamed occasionally by old columnar border stones; some with carvings and inscriptions, prehistoric cairns, stone-built grouse butts and welcome way-marker finger posts at turns in the track. One of the cairns, a round barrow with evidence of curbstones, re-purposed by the Ordnance Survey as a site for a trig-point, marks the highest point on the Cleveland way at 454 meters on Round Hill and further on the pillar of a broken stone cross traditionally has coins left in a depression on its top (see extra).
At Bloworth Crossing the route takes a sharp turn to head across Ingleby Moor, passing Middle Head Top and Tidy Brown Hill, then onto Battersby Moor and Warren Moor, eventually descending towards the village of Kildale with the heather giving way to slopes covered in bright green clumps of bilberry and then soft pastureland in the dale. Lapwing were flapping noisily in the fields.
Kildale has a memorial to the preaching place of John Wesley, a railway station and St Gregory's Church where I sat on an old tomb to eat my lunch, air my feet, change my socks and make this sketch. Unholy but necessary!
Tomorrow takes me up the iconic Roseberry Topping which Herself has become very excited about because it has a well marked at the top - but I fear it has long gone so don't hold your breath (although I will probably be out of mine).

About 11 miles, 5 hours walking.