Costa del Teesside

The journey onto South Gare at Redcar isn't promising. First you drive past light industry and a number of cheap car sales yards. An old fisherman's church is now a mechanic's workshop with a huge door in the side. 

Next a large scrapyard and two sharp bends where you are met with a lone section of railway track just the width of the road and a "Private Road' sign.

Here you follow a high security fence with Redcar British Steel rotting on your left and the Cleveland Golf Links on the right. The road is narrow with passing places and overgrown sand dunes threaten to swollen it up.

It is now it appears to be getting wild, forgotten coastal landscape with water on each side beyond the dunes. A fishing industry starts to appear, Paddy's Hole has a number of small fishing boats and associated buildings around the cove. 

To the right in a hollow of the sand dunes and surrounded by wild flowers is a little village of green huts all neatly placed in a grid pattern. Some have smoke rising from their round metal chimneys. These are the South Gare Fisherman's Association huts.

From here the sides of the road gets busy with parked cars and camper vans. It is a popular 'free camping' spot for RVs and at least 10 or 15 where there. Photographers, bird watchers and sun seekers could be found in the dunes and on the beach. 

As we approached the South Gare the whole area was fog bound, even the lighthouse couldn't be seen. The wind farm offshore gave glimpses of a blade appearing and vanishing. Within 10 minutes it had mostly cleared. 

South Gare was manmade using iron ore slag back in the mid 1800's and forms the top 2 1/2 miles of the beach that stretches all the way down to Saltburn-on-Sea a distance of about 8 miles. 

We had a nice trip out.