Distance: 3.5 miles Time to complete walk: 1.75 hours
Safety Tips: The route can get muddy. Taking a walking stick will help, especially if the ground is marshy after rain.
A simple and easy walk from Saltergate car park to Whinny Nab with a featured cross as a focal point. The option to climb Whinny Nab is available or there is an easier route after the cross. Take £2.50 for the car park.
The Whinny Nab Walk
Getting There
From Middlesbrough head up Ormesby Bank and turn left onto the A171 and follow this road heading towards Whitby. Just before Whitby turn left onto the A169 to Sleights. Follow the A169 through Sleights and then after a while look out for the main Saltergate car park on your left which is the start of the walk.
The car park costs £2.50 for over two hours.
Map of the Whinny Nab walk
The Walk
From the car park turn right and walk to the farm track heading to the right. This is Old Wifes Way. Keep on this track for a while.
Turn right out of the car park
Turn right onto the farm track
Head through a gate and keep on the track for a while. There are great views of Blakey Topping on your left.
Head through the gate
Blakey Topping
When you come to a junction take the left road which heads down to Newgate Foot Farm keeping an eye out for any farm vehicles on the road.
Take the left road down to the farm
Just before you arrive at the farm, look for some steps up to a gate on your left.
Look out for some steps to the left before the farm
Head through the gate to your left
Head towards the left on the grassy track - you need to go through a series of gates keeping to the forest edge on your right.
Head to the left and to the forest edge
Keep on the grass track
The gates are new gates and easy to spot.
Keep on the path through a series of gates
There are great views around you as you head through gate after gate.
There are great views along the walk
Eventually you will come to open moorland and a cross which is Malo Cross
Malo Cross
From the cross examine the signpost. You have an option to head to the path at the bottom of Whinny Nab, or straight up the hill to the top. Whichever path you choose doesn't matter as they converge later. The climb is an easy climb and there are great views at the top.
Examine the sign post
Take either the low path or the path up Whinny Nab
Path to the top of Whinny Nab
At the top keep to the path just to the right of the fence. (If you chose the lower path watch out for deep puddles. The path rises and eventually emerges at the top.)
Views from the top of Whinny Nab
Keep ahead on the path with the fence to your left, You will eventually notice two paths from below converging with the path. Look for a gate ahead and head through it onto an open field.
Keep the wire fence to your left
Head through the gate
Follow the grassy track to a small gate ahead to the right.
Head towards the gate
Turn left and follow the path to another gate. Go through this gate back onto The Old Wifes Way. Turn right and head back towards the car park.
Head towards the gate and turn right back onto the road and head back to the carpark.
The Old Wifes Way
The Old Wifes Way is an ancient pack horse track. Who the old wife was has never been recorded. It is possible that she was a tinker woman who sold her small but essential trinkets and ribbons to farmers wives across the moors.
Another theory is that she was an earth mother or goddess associated with moorland fertility rites thousands of years ago.
Malo Cross
Malo Cross is an ancient way mark on the salt way to Whitby. The view to the north is of Fylingdales Moor and the complex radar equipment of the Ministry of Defence.
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