Clay Bank Top to Blakey Ridge
Stage 14 of 16 (Clay Bank Top to Blakey Ridge, about 8.7 miles / 14 km) is the gentlest day in the North York Moors and a welcome contrast to the switchback Cleveland Hills behind you. From the B1257 road col at Clay Bank Top a single sustained climb on stone flags up Carr Ridge gains the broad whaleback of Urra Moor. Just off the path, Round Hill (454 m / 1,490 ft) is the highest point of the North York Moors National Park, crowned by a trig pillar set on a Bronze Age barrow and flanked by the medieval Hand Stone and Face Stone waymarkers. From here the route is almost flat: it joins the trackbed of the dismantled Rosedale Ironstone Railway at Bloworth Crossing (where the Cleveland Way peels off north) and curves for miles around the head of Farndale on firm, level ballast to the isolated Lion Inn on Blakey Ridge, England's fourth-highest pub. Underfoot is easy, but the moor is utterly exposed with no shelter, no water and patchy phone signal, so it is bleak and disorientating in cloud, rain or snow. Total ascent is modest, in the region of 885 ft / 269 m. The Coast to Coast Path was designated a fully waymarked National Trail in 2026.

Clay Bank Top to Blakey Ridge