25/07/2025
There’s something hauntingly beautiful about standing alone at the top Sutton Bank.
If you’ve ever been there, you’ll know what I mean.
That sharp rise above the Vale of York, the air pressing against your skin, the vast silence broken only by the distant rustle of trees or the passing by of another walker or mountain biker.
But visit it alone, at night, and it becomes something else entirely, a mirror.
Not for your reflection, but for your mind.
That’s how it felt tonight walking upthere. The world was just settling down and going to sleep.
The stars began break through the clouds as the last of the light rapidly faded.
Every step I took on that rugged trail felt like walking deeper into myself.
No phone signal. No headlights. Just me and the shadows as I got further away from the main road.
And that’s exactly what depression feels like.
At night, Sutton Bank is swallowed by blackness.
Some nights you can hold out your hand and not see your fingers.
You can hear your heartbeat and the crunch of your footsteps louder than your own thoughts. It’s an overwhelming kind of dark, not scary in the traditional sense, but consuming. And yet, it’s not unfamiliar.
Depression carries that same oppressive darkness.
Not just in the world around you, but inside you. The difference is, when you're up on that hill you expect the dark.
You choose to walk into it. But with depression, it seeps in slowly, uninvited.
You don’t always notice until one day, you wake up and realise the light has gone.
Walking alone at night, there's no one to guide you, no one to hold your hand. And in depression, even if people are around you, the loneliness can feel just as absolute. You can be in a crowded room and still feel like you're standing alone on that hill, looking out at a world you don’t quite belong to anymore.
Silence is peaceful, they say. But when you’re in that place, be it mentally or physically, silence is not peace. It’s a roar.
On Sutton Bank, the quiet screams. You hear everything, the sound of your breath, your pulse thudding in your ears, the questions you usually drown out during the day.
"Why do I feel like this?" "Does it ever end?" "Would anyone even notice if I didn’t come back down the hill?"
Those thoughts echo in the silence of depression, too. You start to wonder if your existence even casts a shadow anymore.
That lonely walk, where the wind howls past you and nothing answers back, feels a lot like crying in bed at 3 a.m., hoping someone hears you but fearing they won't.
Sutton Bank is a place of paths, winding, worn by feet over hundreds of years.
But at night, they vanish. You have to guess where you're going. One wrong turn, and you’re over the edge, literally. It’s one of the steepest escarpments in England.
Depression does the same thing to your sense of direction. You forget the way out. You lose track of where you were going. Even if there’s a path right in front of you, you can’t see it. And unlike a night walk, where you know daylight will eventually come, depression convinces you it never will.
You question every step. Should I turn back? Should I keep going? Am I lost already?
Here’s the thing though, and it’s why I still walk up there at night a few times a week (That's something I kept to myself until now)
Eventually, even if it takes hours, the light returns. The horizon starts to blush with colour. The sky warms. The paths reveal themselves. The birds begin to stir, and life creeps gently back into the landscape.
That’s something depression tries to make you forget, that light does return.
It doesn’t come fast. It doesn't come when you demand it. Sometimes it takes asking for help, sometimes it takes holding on when you’re sure you can’t. But just like that night walk, where you trust that dawn will arrive, recovery from depression is about trusting something you can’t yet see.
Sutton Bank, in the daylight, is one of the most breathtaking views in North Yorkshire. They call it the "Finest View in England." And my God isn't that the thruth. Well as a Yorkshireman I have to believe that it is.
But when I stand there alone at night, I see another kind of beauty
The raw truth of the human condition. The way we can be surrounded by darkness and still keep walking. The way the cold doesn’t kill us, the silence doesn’t break us, and the lack of light doesn’t stop us putting one foot in front of the other.
If you’re in that dark place right now, please remember, even when you're standing alone on the edge, you are not the only one who’s been there. And just as the sun rises over Sutton Bank, the light will return to your life too.
Keep walking.
You're not alone.
It's Okay To Talk 👌
Steve.
