South Cave to Market Weighton - 12 miles

Today has been a day of long undulating stretches making distance through the Wolds landscape more directly than yesterday’s erratic and varying route. And for the most part those long stretches were walked under horizon-spanning skies.

We climbed the hill behind South Cave to the ridge, our path constrained on the one side by winter-bare woodland and on the other by ordered rows of vineyards descending the sloping valley. The vineyard owner broke from pruning to tell us of his business as we leaned on the wooden gate in the sunshine before our path continued on mud tracks hemmed in by brambles and spindly lichen covered trees. Our boots trod forest, rolling fields peppered white with chalk and flint, and the floors of angular, tree covered dales - dents in the undulating countryside. We walked the base of small valleys scooped gently from the landscape, meandering and river free, while all the time heading northwards and higher into the Wolds.

The trail ran alongside cultivated fields lined with hedges, open terrain under the sweep of open skies. We passed sleek white turbines rotating smoothly in the cold wind. And we ate by an old trig point, a historical footnote of map making that was now white painted and pristine and clearly cared for in a way that it never was when it had a function. Another historical footnote, the path of an old village rail line closed by Beeching, ended our day providing a sole pounding final mile-and-a-half to Market Weighton, the largest town on the route. Although the largest place we would pass through, Market Weighton is still small and with little in the way of facilities. It is probably most famous as the birthplace in 1792 of William Bradley, the tallest man in the country at 7 feet 9 inches although we will remember it for being kept awake by thumping music in our coaching inn accommodation and for a completely unsympathetic pub manager.

Life size Statue of William Bradley