THE Hole of Horcum looked, as always, awesome. There’s a story that the huge mile-wide hole was scooped out by giant named Wade and that he threw the earth at his wife. Couples pulled off the road for romantic photos, and there was scooping at the car park ice cream van, while similar vans hurried to Whitby.

We set off in double anticipation, to savour at leisure the day’s fabulous scenery, and with urgency to find the trains. The North York Moors Railway was having a steam gala, we’d seen the posters driving through Pickering, and knew, at the least, that the trains must be coming our way.

So it was a bit of a rush over Levisham Moor, a mile or more with blue sky and heather, half round the rim of the hole, and in the heather are dykes and Iron Age barrows of tribal chiefs.

Seavy Pond seemed dead to the season but underwater dragonfly nymphs will be hunting or warming, and we heard the hoot of a train.

Within a quarter of an hour we were on the lip of Newton Dale, after a fine descent that again we had hurried. And then we spent ages peering into deep valley for a wisp of smoke, and listening for the hoot and chug, trainspotters for the day.

Our dialogue was “shall we wait or shall we go”, to find another vantage point, without missing the next loco, not having a timetable, sped on by a distant horn or urgent engines. The acoustics of the valley are super, on a quiet day.

Not that there’s nothing but the trains, indeed Newton Dale matches the drama of the Hole of Horcum, so steep and sharp and vivid with the trees and with a history of violent ice age meltwater. Moreover, one does have to watch one’s step as this mile is right along the edge of seriously precipitous and vertical cliffs. Silent jackdaws wafted. We descended steep down a gully in the cliffs, with a splashing stream, to the warmed-up bottom of Newton Dale, primroses and a glassy Pickering Beck.

And here is the tiniest station, named Newton Dale Halt. Dozens of walkers from Newmarket in Suffolk had just missed their train; with cheer they pulled out some cans. I waited to photograph the next arrival, the Sir Nigel Gresley, but it came in backwards. The floor of Newton Dale is very narrow, just room for the railway line, the stream and a Forestry Commission track for our fast excited march.

There was a professional photographer waiting at the spot. Keep on the “side of the sun” advised Andrew Gallon, and I stood beside him. The Bittern slid into view, out of a curve of North Dale, big, blue and beautifully streamlined and pulling wooden carriages. An A4 Pacific said Mr Gallon, like the record-breaking Mallard.

For us, there was a slow, steep climb out of Newton Dale.