The big breakfast

With the Coast to Coast behind us, we promised ourselves a full English on the morning of departure. It's been almost three weeks of muesli and fresh fruit first thing. As we're not walking we can indulge, though with these two pesky early risers, I don't get a lie in. I'll have to wait until I get home for that little beauty.
I pitch up to breakfast sporting the t-shirt we all wore at Uncle Mick's 70th birthday party. He's completely taken aback and chuffed to bits.

After our slap-up feast it's time to say goodbye. Uncles Paddy and Mick are returning to London via their cousin Molly in Manchester and I'll mooch around Whitby for a while before heading home. So there they go, the Bog Cotton Boys, off on another safari.

It feels a bit like waving off my two new Dads. We've been thrown together so intimately these past few weeks. I feel so glad that I had the time to spare, not to mention the good sense to say 'yes' to the adventure. 
Of course, none of it would have happened without Mick's singular approach to organisation, booking hostels before Paddy and I had given the itinerary so much as a cursory glance. Mick's an asset in any hostel, too, hale and hearty at all times, even 6am.
Paddy's pronouncements on 'that bloody Wainwright' have kept us laughing – not to mention the pantomime that ensues when he grapples with his gear – but all he needs to help him forget the pain is a meaty conversation about abbeys. Fortunately the Coast to Coast turned out to be peppered with monastic gems.
And like the good younger brothers they are, they proved to be terribly tolerant of me, whether I was being a bossy boots or a crack-of-dawn curmudgeon. 
Dear Uncles, I wouldn't have missed it for the world.

The end is nigh

So here we are on the final day of our Coast to Coast walking adventure. Two uncles, one niece and a 192-mile challenge we have trekked over, driven back and forth along and negotiated every curve ball it has thrown at us. There's a giddy atmosphere in the car this morning and the uncles are singing and laughing their way through Jimmy Durante musical comedy routines from their childhood.  I love it.

Of course the last few days would not have been the same without the company of our German-Irish new best friend, Hauke, and we all feel it would be fitting to start and finish this last day together. Hauke tells us about the chatty little nine-year-old boy in his B&B and how his parents don't want him to go to Ireland and kiss the Blarney Stone in case it makes him even more chatty.  Pad says, 'And when did you kiss the Blarney Stone, Hauke?'

The day begins in Littlebeck Woods. They're like a stage set for A Midsummer Night's Dream with dappled sunlight filtering through the trees, waterfalls and this hollowed out rock called The Hermitage. We all sit inside and sing Swing Low Sweet Chariot. 

We bring forward our elevenses to 10.30am as we arrive at the most scenic little cafe, Midge Hall, set by a waterfall, Falling Foss. The owners rescued the place a few years ago and it's now a must-do on the trail (though several Coast to Coasters have already passed by and not stopped in – how could they?).



The path opens out onto our last stretch of moorland and we're pinned to it by the fierce sun. It's a huge relief when a cloud passes over and we can whip off our hats to cool down. The promised bog is as dry as a bone.
There's the sea and Whitby Abbey in the distance (somewhere near Pad and Mick's fingers).

We're quite weary now and it's strange to think that tomorrow we won't be walking. We're all clearly thinking differently about the experience, however.

Hauke says, 'I don't want it to end.' 

Paddy says, 'I just want it to end.'

We stop for lunch in the Hare & Hounds in Hawsker, the final village before the clifftop walk round to Robin Hood's Bay. Paddy's toenails have been bugging him so he borrows Hauke's pocket knife and clips them.

I do my classic leg reviver.

We walk on through a holiday trailer park that would normally look like a prison camp but in the bright sunshine looks colourful and fun.

It's a three-mile stretch along the cliff...

...but it feels like an age before Robin Hood's Bay finally reveals itself. Here's the Robin Hood's Bay boys.

We walk down the steep road to the shore. 'I'm glad I cut my toenails,' says Pad.
There's a throng of day trippers in flip-flops and the odd tired and emotional type in walking boots around the sea front. We throw off our boots, dig out our pebbles from the Irish Sea and cast them into the North Sea.

Then someone gets the beers in at the Wainwright Bar of the Bay Hotel and we pose under The End plaque.

Once we've showered we drive back for a last supper with Hauke at the Bay Hotel. He's heard there's a folk club on tonight and has brought his tin whistle. We go along after dinner but after our 12-mile day in the hot sun I think we're just too exhausted to enter into the spirit. Plus there's one last hill to climb – up the steep road to the car park.