The Eskdale cricket league in a small area near Whitby on the North Yorkshire coast has always been one of my favourites. It is a valley very much of ups and downs, often with extreme weather and like many others prone to to the problems of small villages trying to preserve their cricket clubs and actually find eleven men to put into the field.
Saturday 4th August was a rare opportunity to visit yet again in an effort to see cricket on some of the grounds not yet visited. The league's fixtures are hard to come by, but this season I was fortunate to contact the secretary of the only club in the league with a website, Hinderwell, and he kindly sent me the full fixtures. Earlier visits had found matches called off at short notice and I was a little apprehensive with some football starting today whether this might happen again.
Sure enough our first call at Sleights in the valley bottom found nobody around and the pavilion boarded up. However we were rewarded by the sight of a steam train on the nearby North Yorkshire Moors railway just pulling slowly out of Sleights station. It was packed to the gunnels with tourists.
We had already seen a glider being towed in the air at Sutton Bank, a splendid viewpoint on our journey and other attractions also made up for the lack of cricket.
Our next call at Danby proved more fruitful with a game in progress and visitors Goathland in some trouble at 24-3. Despite a couple of fours soon after our arrival another four wickets fell very rapidly and it soon became apparent that the game would not last too long. Opportunity for a few nice pictures however and almost a hat trick with two more wickets in two balls.
When the very young schoolboy at number eleven went to the wicket the end seemed nigh, but he managed to survive while his partner hit a few more boundaries to take the all out score to 52. Danby are top of the league and you could see why, although Goathland were obviously fielding a weakened team.
Moving on to an old favourite at Castleton there seemed to be a better game going on against Grosmont, who managed to bowl the home side out for 136 and looked pretty confident when they set off in pursuit of the target. A welcome call at the neighbouring Eskdale Inn saw us well refreshed as we journeyed on towards Westerdale, now in a different league having moved up to the Langbaurgh League.
Here again we were thwarted by a road closed sign and had to give that one a miss as we diverted back to the moorland road going west across the lonely moors populated only by a lot of sheep.
Our final call after a very scenic journey was at another new ground to us at Broughton, not far from Stokesley, also members of the Langbaurgh League.
Here the game was moving towards a conclusion with magnificent views of the Cleveland Hills. Visitors Moorsholm making short work of a target of 138, with several overs to spare and losing only one wicket in the process. One straight drive for six smashed the pavilion window and involved a lot of clearing up, as the evening sun lit up the neighbouring hills. A wonderful end to a rather special journey, where for once the scenery proved more than a match for the cricket.
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