Day 18 - Grosmont to Robin Hoods Bay

Today should be our last day on the Coast-to-Coast walk.  Fittingly, it rained for much of the night, and our tent is sodden.  We pack it down and leave it with the rest of our overnight gear for the luggage carrying company to pick up; then off into Grosmont for a 9:30am breakfast at the local shop, as none of the cafes have yet opened.  Fortunately the shop keeper comes to the rescue by making Fiona a cup of tea.  Fiona without tea in the morning - it just doesn't bear thinking about.  We drink our tea and coffee on the station platform, watching the staff of the North York Moors Historic Railway prepare a steam engine for its day's work.

We finally get walking at 10:00am, across another section of moor land. It starts raining again, and continues for the rest of the day.  At midday we enter a forest, where we sight the only deer that we have seen on the walk.  Unfortunately it does not stay around for a photo.

Then off across one last moor, before reaching the coast a few kilometres north of Robin Hoods Bay.

Followed by a spectacular, grey, rainy, walk along the coast - which is probably only appropriate for the North Sea - 

before reaching Robin Hoods Bay at 6:00pm.  We have a quick shower, then head to the pub that the guidebooks states is the gathering place for Coast-to-Coasters.  Here we met up with six other people who have also finished the C2C today.  One of them is new to us, but the other five we have seen regularly over the past few days.  Hot dinners are eaten, and C2C stories (both good and bad) are swapped.  

I am smiling - it is just that the rain has washed my teeth away

That is the end of our soggy Coast-to-Coast adventure.  I'll write up a summary next week.  The next adventure, real life (including finding a way to pay for these reckless walking endeavours). 

Distance walked today: 25km

Total distance walked - a little over 300km

As he hurried along, eagerly anticipating the moment when he would be at home again among the things he knew and liked, the Mole saw clearly that he was an animal of tilled field and hedgerow, linked to the ploughed furrow, the frequented pasture, the lane of evening lingerings, the cultivated garden-plot. For others the asperities, the stubborn endurance, or the clash of actual conflict, that went with Nature in the rough; he must be wise, must keep to the pleasant places in which his lines were laid and which held adventure enough, in their way, to last for a lifetime.

- Kenneth Grahame, The Wind in the Willows