Well it’s nearly a week since I finished the Yorkshire Wolds Way (YWW) and I’ve just about recovered! Here in the UK we have quite a lot of official long distance paths, my friend and I were doing one a year until covid struck and we haven’t done one since for various reasons, lock-downs, operations and just life getting in the way. So although I think this is the 8th or 9th long walk we’ve done, we’re five years older and we didn’t manage to do the practise walks we usually do. What I’m trying to say is that we did find it quite a challenge!

The Yorkshire Wolds Way is 79 miles from Hessle, near the Humber Bridge, inland to Market Weighton, then out to Filey Brigg. It finishes at the the end of the Cleveland Way which we walked back in 2019. There’s not much accommodation in the area so we usually had a mile or so to walk to our B&B too. In recent years we’ve always used a baggage transfer service, they collect your suitcase from the B&B in the morning and take it on to the next one, so you only have to carry a day sack and you can have clean clothes on an evening…and a glass of gin! We’ve used a couple of different companies over the years but this time we used a different one, the Weather Goat Walk Support, AKA the Goaties, they were great and I would certainly recommend them. They don’t just transfer your luggage, they’ll pick up people too, so rather than use a taxi service on top, they collected us if needed at the end of a walk and took us to our B&B. They also give general support so if there are any problems during the walk they will help – very reassuring!

A lot of people walk the YWW in 3 or 4 days, walking 20 plus miles a day. We like to enjoy our walks, we like to have time to look at the changing landscape, puzzle over certain features, watch the lambs or the sunlight coming through the trees. We also have various health issues, I for one, have MS and a major balance problem, so we aim to do about ten miles a day, knowing we can push ourselves further if we need to. We had one thirteen mile day this time, that was quite far enough! We walked the eighty miles over eight days, so we averaged ten miles a day.

We started on Saturday 18th May, on our first day we quite often plan a shorter walk so we can drive over, have lunch and then get dropped off at the beginning whilst our designated driver takes our stuff to the first B&B. Here’s us looking nice and fresh at the beginning…

The long distance walks quite often have a feature seat at each end of the walks which go together, so this is one half of the YWW seat. We’re on the banks of the river Humber and as you can see it’s a warm and sunny day.

The walk passes under the Humber bridge, I remember being taken to see the bridge when it was being built – that’s what happened with a dad who was an engineer, a coach trip to see the foundations of a bridge 🙂

It was pretty busy on the path along the river, but after a while we turned off the river side and had a lovely walk through a wooded area and across some fields until we reached the outskirts of Melton.

After nearly seven miles we reached our first B&B which was in the village of Melton, called Eastdale, It was probably just under a mile off the route, so not too far. It was very comfortable, we walked to the Green Dragon pub in Welton for our evening meal and had a delicious steak and ale pie.

Day 2 was walking over nine miles to South Cave. We walked through some more woodland, which we much appreciated as it was a pretty hot day for walking. We passed a very pretty cottage in the woods…

We also started to get some of the huge views which were a feature of this walk. They don’t always photograph well just because they are distant and hazy. This was one of our last views of the Humber…

We stayed at the Fox and Coney in South Cave. Very comfortable and lovely not to have to walk anywhere for our evening meal! We had a good night’s sleep, ready for our big day, the 13 miler!

I think this walk is going to take about three posts, so watch this space!