YP Letters: Viewpoint on a coastline that's all Yorkshire

It is excellent news that the headland overlooking Staithes from the south, with its wonderful view of the harbour, is to be opened to walkers (The Yorkshire Post Magazine, July 9). But this merely restores the situation of years ago.

On holidays in Staithes with my parents in the late 1940s, we always walked round the headland. I also have a high-quality Press photo taken from there in 1955.

We also walked round the headland at Runswick Bay, which provides another superb view. But though the OS map shows a right of way there I have never found it accessible. The Cleveland Way veers from the cliffs by a nondescript field path, followed by the modern road to the village car park. It would be nice to think that the England Coast Path celebrated by Roger Ratcliffe’s article puts this right.

Mr Ratcliffe asserts that the coast north of Staithes “was part of Yorkshire’s North Riding until 1974.” What it formed part of was the North Riding local government area, administered by the North Riding County Council, which was scrapped. The historic, geographic North Riding was unaffected, and everywhere up to the Tees remains within it.

All who love Yorkshire should be loyal to its true boundaries.