22/23 February 2026.
East-west, solo, unsupported except for a stop at the Lion Inn.
16½ hours including the hour in the Lion.
Somehow, without having planned it, I’d arrived at five crossings, including in both directions and an unsupported solo; so thoughts naturally turned to a winter crossing. After support from my wife last time, which certainly led to my personal fastest crossing, I also had a yen to put aside all the planning and coordination of multiple rendezvous at road crossings and return to the simplicity of setting out at one end and emerging at the other end under your own resources (though as I planned to stop for dinner at the Lion Inn, I wasn’t being as purist as all that…) And in another gesture to the original spirit of the Walk, I wanted to do the complete classic route, Raven Hall Hotel to Trig Point.
So I train-and-taxi’d to Ravenscar (no buses on a Sunday) and started at 1030. The first thing that hit me, about five steps in, was the headwind. When either walking or cycling into winds, I always feel an urge to keep going at the speed you think you ought to be going, thereby expending a lot more energy, so I consciously told myself to slow down a bit. This did not need to be a fast crossing. The next point of interest was the devastation of last year’s fires round Jugger Howe and Fylingdales. I thought Lilla Cross looked quite noble in its small oasis of unburnt grass, a symbolic survivor of historic heritage against a background of blackened heather. Incidentally, the couple of dog walkers around Lilla Cross and Eller Beck were the only other walkers I met on the entire crossing.
As January and February had filled with relentless rainfall, I’d worried about the accumulated water, and in the weeks beforehand had sought local knowledge from the helpful LWW community online. In the event, the Wheeldale stepping stones were partially under water but still passable, and I didn’t think the bogs on Wheeldale and Rosedale moors were that much worse than usual. Remarkably, given I’d fixed the date well in advance, I turned out to have chosen a largely rain-free window, just a few patches of mizzle. The forecast had one belt of heavy rain passing through; as I sat scoffing chips in the Lion, people were coming in saying it was pouring outside; but even more remarkably, when I came out, now in full darkness, the rain had stopped. The wettest of my crossings so far remains July!
The crescent moon was just bright enough to do the railway section without using torch, then when it set, the sky was still fairly clear. Coming over the ups-and-downs of the Cleveland Hills, each time I dropped down, Orion would disappear behind the black bulk of the next hill ahead of me, then reassuringly reemerge as I crested it. Walking over those tops under the stars as midnight passed, knowing I was in the final stretch (and no doubt benefiting from a healthy dose of endorphins), seeing house lights spread across the plain below and imagining the poor souls asleep (“gentlemen in England now a-bed”) missing out on the experience I was having, I became distinctly euphoric and felt as if I could keep going for ever: “A song we’ll sing as on we swing with sure and steady tread… Our steps the gods shall guide.” Of course, Cowley in that poem Storm Longing also presciently included the line “Where the high winds never rest”, and that headwind now seemed even stronger. The wind and wet flagstones led to a not always very “sure and steady tread” and I lost footing several times, one of them landing on my walking pole and buckling it.
So I arrived at Beacon Hill at 3am, and merely had to slither down the muddy tracks through Arncliffe Wood to the excellent Park House B&B where my wife kindly (and with the kind approval of the owners) admitted me for a couple of hours sleep before breakfast. Some walks you do primarily for the physical challenge, but some engage you in more than just the miles walked and feet gained: with land and place and heritage. “Come, friends o’ my heart, to the hills we’ll fly…”