Country Walking April 2021

DISCOVER The Lyke Wake Walk
Blue Peter featured it twice, and it became the most
popular charity walk in the country. Witches
and Dirgers could meet at formal ‘wakes’ where
they would sing The Lyke Wake Dirge and hear
dissertations given by those seeking higher
rankings based on their accomplishments –
which soon became astonishing. And then it
all came to a juddering halt. Tell you more in a bit.
11.48am The Lion Inn, Blakey Ridge (19 miles)
The one single pub passed on the route. And
somehow, I’m not stopping. But a mile further on,
while moving in a vast and slightly annoying arc
around the head of Rosedale, I pause to celebrate
being 20 miles into the Lyke Wake. Half way.
I mark the moment by applying Blis-Toes.
1pm Fat Betty (22 miles)
Fat Betty is a distinctive stone, half painted white.
Shortly after passing her, I part ways from the
Coast to Coast. Now it’s just me and the Lyke Wake,
and together we set out across what will be the
predominant terrain for the rest of the route: open
moorland. The junction is marked by the first Lyke
Wake waymarker on the route, a stone that points
into seemingly trackless bog. This is, by the
designation of the offcial guide, ‘the boggy bit’:
three miles of squelch, ditch and hag, all the way to
Shunner How. It’s not too bad at this point in time.
After prolonged rain it becomes some kind of hell.
I’ve seen the photos.
3pm Blue Man i’ th’ Moss (26½ miles)
Easily the most intriguingly named but anticlimactic
moment of the walk: a small, blue-painted
stick man on yet another standing stone. Still open
moorland, but less boggy, and the path is always
roughly visible, even if not much more than a line
in the heather at times.
So let’s get back to the story. By the late Seventies,
the Lyke Wake had become a monster. The huge
numbers caused erosion, litter and even moorland
fires from discarded cigarettes. So in 1982, the
national park authority took drastic action: asking
Ordnance Survey to remove it from maps, turning
down all TV requests to film on the route, and
pleading with charities not to offer it as a sponsored
walk. It worked; numbers plummeted almost
instantly, and the Lyke Wake slowly sank into
something like obscurity.
More in a bit – right now I’ve got to watch out
for the Hogwarts Express.
5.18pm The North Yorkshire Moors
Railway (33 miles)
A little over twelve hours in, I’m crossing the
NYMR, on its way from Pickering to Whitby.
Catch it at the right time and you might catch sight
of a steam locomotive arcing gracefully through
the valley and right past your toes. I didn’t.
6.13pm Lilla Cross (35½ miles)
Past Eller Beck, past the gloomy pyramid of RAF
Fylingdales (the first place that will know if we’re
ever under nuclear attack) and on to this fine ancient
cross. I’m scenting the
end. With my newfound
sense of scale, 4½ miles
will surely feel like less.
6.58pm Jugger Howe
Beck (38 miles)
Nope. Trudging now, and
the drop-climb into and
out of Jugger Howe Beck
was a bit of a £*7%.
So let’s finish this.
The Lyke Wake
continued in its quieter
form into the Nineties. But after Bill Cowley passed
away in 1994, things started to get weird. Different
factions within the fanbase argued over the future
of the club, culminating in an extraordinary day:
October 1st, 2005; the 50th anniversary of Cowley’s
first crossing.
At a wake in Ravenscar, the original Lyke Wake
Club was formally disbanded, its leaders feeling
the organisation had run its course. At another,
in Osmotherley, a breakaway faction launched
the New Lyke Wake Club, feeling that there should
still be an active home for fans of the walk.
Both factions continue today. The original club
maintains the lykewakewalk.co.uk website and still
issues merchandise. The New Club is far more
active, producing a regularly updated guidebook,
recording crossings, holding wakes, and selling
subtly different merch at lykewake.org
It is an astonishing tale, told in more florid detail
in Mike Parker’s wonderful book Wild Rover. And it
explains why a walk that was once a staple of
Seventies TV has now become a whispered secret.
I meet plenty of walkers during my crossing, but all
are either just out for the day, or doing the Cleveland
Way or Coast to Coast. Several look blank when
I mention the Lyke Wake Walk. Two mishear it
as the Lightweight Walk – a source of some irony,
given the 50-litre rucksack on my back.
7.26pm The Coast Road (39 miles)
The end – a radio mast – is literally in sight, and
I will soon breach 40 miles. Footsore and pretty
tired, but nearly there now, eh?
7.45pm Stony Marl Moor (40½ miles)
WHAT IS GOING ON? Everything said the Lyke
Wake was 40 miles. But my GPS says I’ve smashed
through the big 4-0 and the mast is still way ahead
of me. AND IT’S ALL UPHILL.
7.52pm Beacon Howes (41 miles)
’Tis done. 14 hours, 54 minutes and 28 seconds
after I left the first marker stone, I’m at the second.
It’s an inauspicious end: stone, mast, layby, grey
gloaming. It’s not even ‘at’ Ravenscar or on the
coast – the village and its cliffs are half a mile
further on (the finish line used to be at the Raven
Hall Hotel in Ravenscar, but was moved shy of the
village by local request). I’m not sure why my watch
thinks I’ve gone an extra mile; I never deviated
from the route. So I either mistrust the offcial
u
A RARE BEAST
Aside from the
etched stones at
either end, there
are only two
waymarkers along
the 40-mile route.
This is one.
WHY SO
BLUE, MAN?
The standing stone
Blue Man i’ th’Moss
(opposte page, top)
is the only named
object on the map
for several miles.
Nice chap, good
with the banter.
Brian Smailes,
who passed away in
November last year, was
a legend of the Lyke
Wake. Chairman of the
New Club and author of
all four editions of its
offcial Lyke Wake Walk
Guide, he also held the
records for the fastest
continuous four and
five crossings. Says
club secretary Gerry
Orchard: “Many
a person having
completed the walk will
be grateful for Brian’s
tireless efforts. He had
a wonderful line in
humour; correct and
formal when required
but with a wonderful
mischievous streak too.”
APRIL 2021 COUNTRY WALKING 49