Who would have thought that the highlight of this walk would be the promenade at Redcar. We park the car at Zetland Park which is roughly where we finished last time and start walking along the seafront. Revamped in 2013 at a cost of £30 million pounds the promenade is full of surprises.

This huge anchor stands as a testament to yet more lives lost at sea – the memorial plaque tells the story.

A little further on we meet the first of a series of delightful, brightly painted, metal relief panels, mounted in the 90’s. As well as well known nursery rhymes, there are also those depicting summer holidays on the beach for families from the industrial cities of the north. I can’t stop taking photographs of them but I should have been down on my knees to take the pictures to correct the slant.

Anyway…………….

As if this wasn’t enough, our next surprise is a family of penguins sitting comfortably on their paving slabs – some look a little lost.

And just before the end of the promenade stands this piece of public art…..

Entitled Sinterlation, the sculpture features four boats and four large steel chains to represent the town’s relationship with its fishing fleet and nearby steel works. The name of the sculpture comes from sinter, a granulated material applied to the top of a blast furnace.

The path now takes us around the top of Cleveland Golf Course where it splits into two – one half morphing into the Teesdale Way, which wiggles away north to the tip of a peninsular and its lighthouse. From there, the only way back is to retrace one’s steps and I am never keen on doing that. We choose instead to pick up the Teesdale Way by turning left and following a minor road through an industrial estate, where we then head south through a local nature reserve called Coatham Marsh. A wiki tells me that in the late 11th century the marsh was one of the last strongholds of northern nobles holding out against the invasion by William the Conquerer – the site of a battle. Today there are only a few locals walking their dogs – handy for directions as the way markers are slightly ambiguous.

The marsh is also split in two by a railway line but there is a footbridge………..

Soon we reach the edge of the marsh and the peace and quiet is savagely broken by traffic hurtling along the A1085. We wait until there is a break in the traffic and then scuttle across to end our walk outside the pizza joint in Dormanstown – a slightly inauspicious place to end the walk, but it is getting dark and there is a bus to take us back to our car.

Distance: 4 miles