Fylingdales and Goathland - Rock Art Walk

Today we drove down to the Robin Hood's Bay area, to meet up with the NEWalks group who'd organised a trip there today.

We were there primarily to see the rock art panels, many of which have recently been rediscovered after a fire cleared most of the heather in 2003. Our guide was Graeme Chappell, who's spent many years wandering the moors in Yorkshire looking down at his feet!

After setting off intending to visit the beach at RHB and failing miserably, we arrived just in time to set off across the grassy moor. It's grassy now, but used to be a few feet thick in heather and peat, all of this was burnt off in the fire. The grass was sown in order to prevent what little soil was left being blown away as dust - but in many places the heather is already recovering.

After the fire, there were many cairns and features visible which are already started to be hidden again. Read some more about the fire here.

We walked at a leisurely pace, enough time for everyone to see some decent panels - and quite a few of the smaller rocks inbetween had carvings, often individual cups (someone decided that people who didn't bother with these were to be known as Cup Snobs!)

We did Stoupe Brow first, and headed south towards Fylingdales proper. There were plenty of stones to see, although some of them were sadly quite faded now.

After much wandering and wondering we ended up visiting Judith, so named after a misheard conversation about camera techniques! She's a cracker.



We enjoyed some more moor-scrambling and headed off over to a standing stone, and the place where a lot of our party headed home. We had one more pilgrimage to a small stone resembling either a chewed toffee or oyster shell, strangely unlike anything else in the area and very interesting...



Then a walk up towards the communications mast and the carpark, passing areas which had not been touched by the fire, illustrating what the depth of the heather had been before (approx 5 feet in some places).

We drove next to see some sites at Allan Tofts, but although some cairns were visible, the bracken was very high in some places so we didn't see as much as we'd hoped. Another excuse to return!

Gave up on the idea of chips (next time!) and headed home into the sunset.