Scarborough

Hi guys, as you know we’ve just moved home and to fully replenish ourselves from the stresses of moving we decided last weekend, as it was a bank holiday, to visit the seaside for a much needed getaway. Our destination Scarborough.
It’s one of my favourite places, plenty to see and do and eat. The history of British seaside towns is quite tragic really, once they were bustling centres for tourists with the developing railways that stretched across Britain in the Victorian era, and gradually as years flew by air travel became more accessible and affordable to the masses and with the introduction of the package holiday british seaside towns decayed. However many places held on and have regenerated themselves as “holidays at home” have become popular again. Scarborough is such a place. With its cliff top castle ruins, grand hotel perched bravely on the seafront and the resting place of one of England’s finest writers Anne Bronte, there is much to see and do.

Anyway enough history. We caught an early train and as it isn’t a very long journey from where we live we arrived in plenty of time to go to the beach before lunch.

The sun was out but kept hiding behind scattered cloud but this didn’t dissuade me one bit, I had brought a towel and intended to paddle! (I had been waiting an awfully long while to visiting the seaside) despite the water being a tad cold, it was wonderful to have the waves splash up my legs as my toes sunk into the sloppy sand underneath. I just love a paddle.

The weather had been on and off all week so I was quite surprised to see so many people eager to spend the day on the sea front, but it was a bank holiday weekend and people were determined to enjoy it, we sat close to the donkeys on the beach which were walking back and forth ferrying little children to and fro on donkey rides, the donkeys themselves were allowed quite a bit of freedom and could wander if they wished but never went far from their herd.

It was nice to see people flying kites on the beach as well, something which I’ve never tried, but am eager to do so next time. I love the sea and found myself more than a little snap happy as the tide came in

The sunshine on the waves was great and there were many yachts out to sea, not to mention the pirate ship which does a trip round the South Bay.

From the beach there is the best view of the grand hotel, which is unmistakable in its Victorian grandeur.

What a great view those windows must have. Also from the beach you can see the lighthouse on the harbour . . .

And further north the castle ruins . . .

The castle is run by English Heritage and you have to pay on entry. It’s a pretty steep climb which I’ve done many times but we didn’t visit on this occasion. The castle holds special events somedays with medieval activities such as jousting, and is great fun for adults and kids alike. Just outside the castle is a graveyard overlooking the South Bay, this is where Anne Bronte is buried. The Bronte sisters are some of my favourite authors and “Agnes Grey” by Anne Bronte is one of my favourite books, its heart-warming to see that some people still put flowers near her grave.

After our rest on the beach we took a wander and had lunch at the “Golden Grid” seafood restraunt which is partly the inspiration for a book by GP Taylor, which has now been made into a film. I’d been to this restraunt before and was won over by its maritime charm and great food, most if not all of which is caught the very same day. (note to self, must try the crab cakes with sweet chili sauce, sounds yummy)
On this occasion we had haddock and chips, well, you can’t go to seaside without having fish and chips, and in Scarborough there’s no shortage of places to get them. We then, with full bellies, headed towards the north bay. We skirted round the cliff where the castle lies and I got a few snaps of the seabirds nesting on the cliff face.

I’m not great at identifying seabirds yet but I know most of them were common seagulls and Herring gulls, if they’re not the same thing anyway. We didn’t go all the way up to north beach as we were running short of time to get our return train, but as we were walking back we heard a woman saying “I’ve just seen something!” And was pointing out to sea, so we stopped to have a look, and sure enough we saw rising out of the water every few moments, a dorsal fin! We weren’t sure what it belonged to at first perhaps a porpoise or a dolphin but we were sure it was a mammal.

This was the first time I’d seen a dolphin/porpoise and it was an amazing end to a great day, we strolled back the way we came as the porpoise was going in the same direction, I got a little video as I loved to see the shine of the water off its skin as the sun caught it. As we reached the harbour we stopped for an ice cream and watched a man and his son fishing for crabs on the harbour wall, they had a big enough job keeping the oversized seagulls away from their catch. We headed for the train station tired but content, content that the weather had maintained its warmth and sunshine, content that we’d had a good feed of fish and chips and ice cream, content that I’d finally got to go for a paddle and now my feet feel lovely and soft because of the exfoliating sand, just content.