Whitby harbour [picture: esk railway]
Yesterday we spent the day on the Yorkshire coast. Staithes, Runswick Bay and the fishing town of Whitby. It was the first hot Saturday of the year and the great British public were out in force to go crabbing and eat eat fish n chips next to the North Sea. Sat on a bench staring out at the ocean, an old man said to me: "There's a sharp horizon. It's going to be good". He was right.
Whitby is a small but important English fishing port, an even more important tourist town and the erstwhile residence of Bram Stoker whilst he wrote his gothic novel Dracula. For me and Missus Moonbase it's quite simply an escape to another world. Just two hours from our house, it's a home from home. We've been going there and to its neighboring villages for so long as a family it feels like we've never been away. Yet every visit is magical as I'm sure it is for many of you who have favourite seaside haunts.
For me personally Whitby is the birthplace of my collecting bug. It was in 1989 on our first trip that I found the first Project SWORD annual I'd seen since I was a kid in '69, in a second hand bookshop called Cuvvins. Twenty years had passed since I'd seen all those wonderful colour illustrations by Malcolm Stokes and the like. It was a revelation that such things still existed!
Over the next 25 years visiting the Yorkshire coast I found robots, rockets, books, monsters and a Fairylite Stingray for good measure! It was all great fun.
Do you have a favourite seaside place readers?
Gothic Whitby: steps to the Abbey ruins [picture: the guardian]
I share your enthusiasm for Whitby- I had a very pleasant stay there. Also like old Hastings, Scarborough, and resorts on the Norfolk coast such as Cromer Happisburgh & Gorleston -amongst others.
ReplyDeleteWhitby is a fine town. Went there some years back, too in Scarborough, Robin Hood Bay and several stops between. My fave bit of coast must be North Wales, Presyatyn, Rhyl and all the seaside shops of my childhood. All gone now, but still there in the recesses of memory and recorded in the many toys I gathered on holiday. Off to Conway soon, not been there for many moons.
ReplyDeleteWhitby is a fine town. Went there some years back, too in Scarborough, Robin Hood Bay and several stops between. My fave bit of coast must be North Wales, Presyatyn, Rhyl and all the seaside shops of my childhood. All gone now, but still there in the recesses of memory and recorded in the many toys I gathered on holiday. Off to Conway soon, not been there for many moons.
ReplyDelete