A 7 mile round trip to the top of Roseberry Topping, along the Cleveland Way to the Cook Monument and back into Great Ayton
The final trek of our week in North Yorkshire, this time in the North Yorkshire Moors national park rather than the Yorkshire Dales. We began in Great Ayton where we parked in the high street and set off towards Roseberry Topping.
After a mile or so of walking uphill through woods and footpaths towards the topping!
Hurrah! We reached the top of Roseberry Topping! Roseberry Topping is also known as the ‘Yorkshire Matterhorn’ due to its similar shape. The summit is 320 meters high and the views stretched across to Middlesborough in the north and the Yorkshire Moors to the south.
The top of Roseberry Topping was windy… apparently it is always windy so care needs to be taken to ensure you don’t fall off!
From Roseberry Topping we descended down the step flagstone path and headed along a section of the Cleveland Way towards the Captain Cook Monument.
By now the weather was bleak again… windy and raining which meant our trek became a bit of a slog between these two well-known peaks.
Before we got to the Cook Monument we came to the main visitors car park, found a bench and decided to sit in the rain and eat our lunch, thankfully OK as we all had waterproof trousers on. Back to soggy sandwiches and somewhat different to the previous days’ luxury lunch in the Tan Hill Inn…
Captain Cook’s monument was built in 1827 to commemorate the life of Captain James Cook, the explorer and British Navy captain who circumnavigated the globe and mapped out New Zealand and the South Pacific. Captain Cook lived in nearby Great Ayton as a boy and there is a Cook museum there (although currently closed due to Covid).
It was cold and bleak and windy at the top of the Cook Monument hill so we didn’t stay too long before starting our trek back down towards Great Ayton.
We chose a steep, slippery and muddy back back through the woods and continued down towards the cars. By the time we reached them we were wet and muddy, however once we had removed our waterproofs we enjoyed another tea and cake in a lovely tea shop!
The 6 of us left our waterproofs drying for the final time in the holiday house kitchen, above the Aga and enjoyed a final evening meal in the Black Bull in Moulton.
The end of a fabulous week in the Yorkshire Dales where we have hiked nearly 50 miles each and scaled to the top of 3 separate peaks. This is with thanks especially to Mike who designed the itinerary and to Russell (and Mike) who led the walks. And Flo for selecting and booking the wonderful holiday house 🙂
frombluetogreen.com 
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