Day 27 - Filey

Distance Walked: 14.5km, Actual Time Taken: 3h 20m, Estimated Time Taken: 4h 10m
Ascent: 512m, Descent: 499m, # Times Lost: 0
Beer: 1 bottle Singha beer (Harmless)

I have completed the Cleveland Way and all three hikes of my holiday.  My feet and knees can breathe a sigh of relief.  The discrepancy between the actual time and estimated time is not due to me suddenly developing a high turn of speed.  Instead, this time my route notes actually over-quoted the distance to cover.  Instead of quoting the distance to the official end point on the Filey Brigg peninsula it included the extra 2.5km into the town of Filey itself.  I didn't.  I turned the GPS off when I got to the end marker.  But it took me another 45 minutes to get into Filey.

I had lovely weather for this, my last day of hiking.  Clear blue skies without any cloud and no wind, let alone a head wind.  The scenery was, as always, lovely.  I got to see a colony of seals today.  They make a surprising amount of noise.  Those blobs on the end of the rocks at the top of the photo are seals - I swear.

Also walking along these cliffs I saw lots of signs warning about landslips and how unstable the cliff edges are.  However, this is probably the best example of how much erosion these cliffs undergo.  Below is a photo of a WW2 lookout bunker.  It used to be on the edge of the cliff, not down on the beach.

What I also saw a lot of, which was very sad, were bunches of flowers at various points along the coastline.  Sometimes there was also a sign or photo giving details of the person who had died there.  Given they all seemed to be people in their teens or early 20s I'm guessing most (if not all) are sights where people have committed suicide rather than died from an accidental fall.  Rather confronting to see these markers for mile after mile.

On reaching Filey around 1:45pm I treated myself to a "proper afternoon tea" (that was how it was described on the menu).  This consisted of two sorts of sandwiches (cream cheese & walnut and ham), two bit sized quiches, a scone with jam and clotted cream, a chocolate brownie and a slice of ginger cake with cream cheese icing - all on a stand, along with a pot of tea.  This got commented on by several other people in the cafe.  One woman actually changed her order so she could have it too.  She ate all of hers.  I left half the brownie and half the piece of cake.

My tour company had organised with a local taxi firm to drive me back to Scarborough as I'm staying in the hotel here for two nights.  They couldn't source lodging for me in Filey.  A lot of B&Bs in these seaside resorts have a minimum of 2 nights policy.  However, my taxi ride wasn't until after 4pm and I finished up my lunch around 2:30pm.  Filey is pretty town but not pretty enough that I wanted to linger for 1 1/2 hours so I caught a bus back.  It took less than 30 minutes to cover the distance I'd spent the best part of 4 hours to walk.  

For dinner I settled on the Thai Orchard.  I had planned on going to a highly rated Middle Eastern place but I saw on the menu that many of their dishes were served with chips, in deference to local preferences.  However, I'm all chipped out.  The Thai restaurant looked like a typical local Thai restaurant you could find in any suburb in Melbourne.  It made no attempt to cater for Western tastes.  I had the Tom Kha Gai soup then Larb Gai with jasmine rice.  My sinuses have been scorched clear.

I'm now back in my hotel getting organised to go home.  Tomorrow it is trains to London then the day after it is planes to Melbourne.  I'm feeling a little sorry for myself now that it is all coming to an end.  Which is all quite ridiculous as I'm going home to my furry crew, whom I miss, as well as friends and family and activities that I enjoy.  Plus, I've already booked my house minder for April and May of next year so it is time to start planning my next holiday!