The Whitby Trip
Oct. 11th, 2006 07:35 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
blacklillyHere it is in all its glory. A few picture are missing as I've used up my bandwidth for this month (or something) but I'll post them some other time. Like next month... maybe.
We hit a turn in the road, which I quickly react to by whipping the steering wheel round, flinging the car through the bend. The result is a cascade of Minstrels and Haribo Gold Bears across the dashboard of the car. The bears slide across to me and, through some quirk of gravity, conveniently land in my lap. A Minstrel lodges itself in the airshafts on the dashboard, and will no doubt become chocolaty goo by the time the journey has finished.
This is our trip through the Yorkshire Moors. A slightly misty York and the downright lies of the BBC weather service led us to believe we would have a reasonably clear day ahead of us. Not so. These familiar roads and moors are swathed in a thick animalistic fog that does not lift until we reach the coast, and even then it billows across our path as though it were stalking us. The visibility in the car in down to ten meters in some places, and I am constantly surprised by the appearance of car headlights coming in the opposite direction. It seems to me that they blink open and glare when they see us, as though we were waking them from an albino slumber. Reaching the crest of a hill always brings a momentary panic, for we can see nothing beyond for a few seconds, save the blanket greyness which may lead to a road, or which may lead to nothingness and a quick decent into moor land.
Staithes is our first stop on the journey, and my initial impression as we drive in, is that this is an unremarkable place, full of unremarkable things. But we follow the signs to Staithes, even when we are in Staithes, and find ourselves halting in a car park. From here we can see nothing of what lies at the foot of the steep hill we have been told not to drive down, and so begin the precipitous descent on foot. A sheer gorge divides the small village in two, and as we peer over the walls we are met with the sight of old shacks clinging to the cliff sides above the river, their corrugated roofs held down with heavy rocks. Staithes clings tenaciously to the coast and is famously battered by North Sea storms, so much so that the Cod and Lobster pub has been blown away three times and yet here it remains still, perched on the harbour wall, waiting for the next tempest to challenge it.
Much is the same with the rest of the town. It gives the impression of being a working fishing village, too preoccupied with the catch to attend to the finer details a more vacation-inclined village would make time for. Not that it is without charm. Old fisherman’s houses with peeling burgundy paint and old sash windows sit alongside small art galleries, and homes with absentee owners. Lobster pots are stacked alongside manicured rockeries, and frame the entrances to tiny alleyways that may or may not lead elsewhere.
Through the town and out to the harbour, protected by huge rocks dropped into front of its walls; into which the north sea charges with it fierce foaming surf, spitting and churning into the air which each pulse. This town in under permanent attack, and its ruggedness is aided by the dominant Cowbar Nab cliff that rises above, scarred and pocked from weather and rock fall. The locals seem to reflect this windswept character. They sit by the Cod and Lobster and converse in their thick Yorkshire twang, their eyebrows prominent, and their faces beaten and sea salt burnt, while their dogs sit obediently at their feet.
After Staithes we drive to Kettleness, a town that was not so successful against the sea, its residents having to be hauled from the sea by ships after the village fell into the fierce waters below in 1829. Allegedly it offers spectacular views: “Today the towering brown cliffs make for devastatingly stark photos” says the Footprint Guide to England, but our only view was a thick opaqueness against which we saw nothing by the ghosts of nearby hay bales, and could only just make out the sound of the waves below through the dampening effect of the fog.
We give in to the miasma and wend our way along the coast down to Whitby where we will be staying the night. Entering the town is a shock. For the past few hours we have negotiated thin moor lanes and have seen few other people since our stop in Staithes. To hit the centre of Whitby and find it swarming with humans is disconcerting, and slightly disappointing. It transpires that the build up of pedestrian, and vehicular traffic, is due to the opening of the harbour swing bridge to a number of high masted yachts making their way up stream into the Esk. Once we are on the move again, it is to drive past the busy arcades and the ever-present queue outside the famous Magpie Café. Eventually we find the B&B. Today there are no glorious views of St Mary’s Church or the Abbey ruins, as the fog is once again impeding our view. Instead we walk around the town trying to find the Victorian Whitby Museum. I find aginnel (a medieval pedestrian alleyway climbing up the side of the cliff) and photograph it. On the way down I slip on one of the steps and fall hard, but merely rip my tights and bruise my bum. Still, sitting down too forcefully hurts. My dignity in tatters, we retreat to a pub full of raucous locals, find me a quite stunning Swarovski Crystal choker in an antique shop and then queue outside the Magpie for a gut-busting dinner, followed by a trip to the Elsinore pub, where I mull over asking the barman to give me a tour behind the scenes for my Horror in East (nee West) Cliff story. I don’t ask.
After a sleepless night I wake at 7am and spend a few minutes trying to recall exactly why I have launched myself from the bed. My sore, and quickly blackening buttock is a literal pain in the arse, and my whole waist section is sore and stiff. It seems I may have pulled the muscles on the opposite side of my body, which means not only pain on the rear right side, but also on the front left. It is then I remember that I had planned to take a walk down to the harbour. I throw open the curtain and am pleased to find that the mist has lifted and that I can see the abbey from my window. I dress quickly, grab my camera and head out along to the Captain Cook Memorial and then down the stairs to the Khyber Pass and the harbour. At this early hour I am almost by myself. There are a few morning walkers strolling the length of the east pier, another few photographers hoping for inspiration, and a father and daughter watching a seal bobbing its head from the sea just off the pier.
I too follow the pier and head out toward the Octagonal lighthouse. On my way I watch a seagull capture and kill a crab. It barely waits until it is free of the sea before smashing and pulling the struggling crab to pieces with its beak. I feel quite sick watching the death of an animal by another one, so am relieved when the sea catches up with the seagull and pulls out the severed limbs with its retreat.
The tide is coming in and where the harbour has been fortified with walls of huge rocks the sea is tumultuous – throwing itself up against the walls, clawing for a purchase on the sea-slime-slick sides of the harbour. It crashes and makes the wooden slats of the pier rattle with its force. The gaps between the boards are two-inches or so, and even though there is no sea directly beneath me, I still tread carefully. At the very end of the pier is nothing but the grey north sea, rolling in huge swells toward the harbour, small charter fishing vessels bobbing in and out of sight as each wave sweeps against them.
After breakfast Lou and I take the bags back to the car and then set off through town to the 199 steps leading up to St Mary’s Church and the ruins of the Abbey. Lou has been reading “Dracula”, her first time, and so we discuss the likelihood of a Victorian woman running from East Crescent (allegedly the guesthouse we have been staying in was a model for Lucy Westenra’s home) through the town and up the steep steps to the abbey, where she has seen (in the dead of night) her friend being attacked on a bench by a fiendish bloodsucker. Lou points out that the book itself stretches reality somewhat, so maybe we should let it go. Still, later on we propose one of us sitting at the abbey, the other at East Crescent and performing some sort of ridiculous re-enactment in the name of literary pedantism. Meanwhile, we have come to the foot of the steps.
“ It’s a bit like cycling up hill,” I say. “ Don’t look at the top, and just keep going.” To ease our passage I start counting the steps. I get up to 99 before losing breath, at which point Lou takes over, and we clear all 199 (or 200 as Lou counts) steps up the top of East Cliff. Recovering from jelly legs and profuse sweat we sit above the harbour and survey the rather glorious view afforded of the town at that vantage point. We watch boats bobbing out at sea, cars circling their way up the Khyber Pass, the procession of increasing tourist numbers along the seafront below us. We decide not to go to the abbey, but nose about the church and watch the bell-ringers and their curiously accurate time calls as they ring out the morning cry from the church.
We descend the steps, walk back through the town and then buy tickets for a trip on the Bark Endeavour, a miniature version of the Captain Cook’s boat moored a little further up the harbour. Our harbour-based journey is pleasant enough, but as soon as we leave the protection of its far-reaching arms we are up against the large swell on attacking waves. To our left, the waves are breaking out at sea in huge white ruffs of spray and fury, and we realise that there is a reason for the black flags we follow out. I turn to look at Lou. She’s looking distinctly green. “ It’s a bit like being at Alton Towers,” she says, as the collective “ohh!” of the landlubbers on board accompanies the trough of a particularly large wave. Heading back to land is little more fun, the push of the waves making this quarter-sized version of its inspiration surf into harbour on huge waves.
Robin Hood’s Bay is our next stop and this time I am disappointed. The first time I came here it was empty. Today, we are lucky to find somewhere to park, and are stuck behind the hulking forms of people heading down the 30% incline to the heart of the old smugglers cove.
Robin Hood’s Bay is a spoilt version of Staithes. Charming in its petite and steadfast way, linked by so many tiny snickelways it is tempting to lose oneself amongst them. However, the sheer number of people on this visit puts me off its rather romantic character, and after ice cream on the seaweed-strewn beach (using that word very lightly) we decide to head back over the moors to the Hole of Horcum and then back to York.
Our last stop at the Hole is breathtaking. In all my journeys this way, this is the first time I have stopped to appreciate the view and it is truly a astounding panorama. A glacial valley slices through the moorland, and to attest to it magnitude, the small forms of people walking its base are equivalent to small dots, nay ants. Legend has it that the hole was created by a giant who hurled the earth at his wife, missed and created the Boulby Cliffs some way off. The idea of a hulking great glacier eroding and carving away at this land suits my imagination better. The slow creak and crack of moving ice, gnawing its heavy way across the land.
York is sunny when we arrive home, and though we have only been away a day, it still has the feeling for me that I have been away for a long time. Every time I go to York I remark that it is not how it used to be. My trip away as been a reinforcement of the fact that progress is unstoppable. Be it the sea clawing away at your cliff roots, the ancient carve of glacier, or the creep of tourism, all things are transient. We must see them while we can.
Any comments (nice ones would be good) are appreciated.
We hit a turn in the road, which I quickly react to by whipping the steering wheel round, flinging the car through the bend. The result is a cascade of Minstrels and Haribo Gold Bears across the dashboard of the car. The bears slide across to me and, through some quirk of gravity, conveniently land in my lap. A Minstrel lodges itself in the airshafts on the dashboard, and will no doubt become chocolaty goo by the time the journey has finished.
This is our trip through the Yorkshire Moors. A slightly misty York and the downright lies of the BBC weather service led us to believe we would have a reasonably clear day ahead of us. Not so. These familiar roads and moors are swathed in a thick animalistic fog that does not lift until we reach the coast, and even then it billows across our path as though it were stalking us. The visibility in the car in down to ten meters in some places, and I am constantly surprised by the appearance of car headlights coming in the opposite direction. It seems to me that they blink open and glare when they see us, as though we were waking them from an albino slumber. Reaching the crest of a hill always brings a momentary panic, for we can see nothing beyond for a few seconds, save the blanket greyness which may lead to a road, or which may lead to nothingness and a quick decent into moor land.
Staithes is our first stop on the journey, and my initial impression as we drive in, is that this is an unremarkable place, full of unremarkable things. But we follow the signs to Staithes, even when we are in Staithes, and find ourselves halting in a car park. From here we can see nothing of what lies at the foot of the steep hill we have been told not to drive down, and so begin the precipitous descent on foot. A sheer gorge divides the small village in two, and as we peer over the walls we are met with the sight of old shacks clinging to the cliff sides above the river, their corrugated roofs held down with heavy rocks. Staithes clings tenaciously to the coast and is famously battered by North Sea storms, so much so that the Cod and Lobster pub has been blown away three times and yet here it remains still, perched on the harbour wall, waiting for the next tempest to challenge it.
Much is the same with the rest of the town. It gives the impression of being a working fishing village, too preoccupied with the catch to attend to the finer details a more vacation-inclined village would make time for. Not that it is without charm. Old fisherman’s houses with peeling burgundy paint and old sash windows sit alongside small art galleries, and homes with absentee owners. Lobster pots are stacked alongside manicured rockeries, and frame the entrances to tiny alleyways that may or may not lead elsewhere.
Through the town and out to the harbour, protected by huge rocks dropped into front of its walls; into which the north sea charges with it fierce foaming surf, spitting and churning into the air which each pulse. This town in under permanent attack, and its ruggedness is aided by the dominant Cowbar Nab cliff that rises above, scarred and pocked from weather and rock fall. The locals seem to reflect this windswept character. They sit by the Cod and Lobster and converse in their thick Yorkshire twang, their eyebrows prominent, and their faces beaten and sea salt burnt, while their dogs sit obediently at their feet.
After Staithes we drive to Kettleness, a town that was not so successful against the sea, its residents having to be hauled from the sea by ships after the village fell into the fierce waters below in 1829. Allegedly it offers spectacular views: “Today the towering brown cliffs make for devastatingly stark photos” says the Footprint Guide to England, but our only view was a thick opaqueness against which we saw nothing by the ghosts of nearby hay bales, and could only just make out the sound of the waves below through the dampening effect of the fog.
We give in to the miasma and wend our way along the coast down to Whitby where we will be staying the night. Entering the town is a shock. For the past few hours we have negotiated thin moor lanes and have seen few other people since our stop in Staithes. To hit the centre of Whitby and find it swarming with humans is disconcerting, and slightly disappointing. It transpires that the build up of pedestrian, and vehicular traffic, is due to the opening of the harbour swing bridge to a number of high masted yachts making their way up stream into the Esk. Once we are on the move again, it is to drive past the busy arcades and the ever-present queue outside the famous Magpie Café. Eventually we find the B&B. Today there are no glorious views of St Mary’s Church or the Abbey ruins, as the fog is once again impeding our view. Instead we walk around the town trying to find the Victorian Whitby Museum. I find a
After a sleepless night I wake at 7am and spend a few minutes trying to recall exactly why I have launched myself from the bed. My sore, and quickly blackening buttock is a literal pain in the arse, and my whole waist section is sore and stiff. It seems I may have pulled the muscles on the opposite side of my body, which means not only pain on the rear right side, but also on the front left. It is then I remember that I had planned to take a walk down to the harbour. I throw open the curtain and am pleased to find that the mist has lifted and that I can see the abbey from my window. I dress quickly, grab my camera and head out along to the Captain Cook Memorial and then down the stairs to the Khyber Pass and the harbour. At this early hour I am almost by myself. There are a few morning walkers strolling the length of the east pier, another few photographers hoping for inspiration, and a father and daughter watching a seal bobbing its head from the sea just off the pier.
I too follow the pier and head out toward the Octagonal lighthouse. On my way I watch a seagull capture and kill a crab. It barely waits until it is free of the sea before smashing and pulling the struggling crab to pieces with its beak. I feel quite sick watching the death of an animal by another one, so am relieved when the sea catches up with the seagull and pulls out the severed limbs with its retreat.
The tide is coming in and where the harbour has been fortified with walls of huge rocks the sea is tumultuous – throwing itself up against the walls, clawing for a purchase on the sea-slime-slick sides of the harbour. It crashes and makes the wooden slats of the pier rattle with its force. The gaps between the boards are two-inches or so, and even though there is no sea directly beneath me, I still tread carefully. At the very end of the pier is nothing but the grey north sea, rolling in huge swells toward the harbour, small charter fishing vessels bobbing in and out of sight as each wave sweeps against them.
After breakfast Lou and I take the bags back to the car and then set off through town to the 199 steps leading up to St Mary’s Church and the ruins of the Abbey. Lou has been reading “Dracula”, her first time, and so we discuss the likelihood of a Victorian woman running from East Crescent (allegedly the guesthouse we have been staying in was a model for Lucy Westenra’s home) through the town and up the steep steps to the abbey, where she has seen (in the dead of night) her friend being attacked on a bench by a fiendish bloodsucker. Lou points out that the book itself stretches reality somewhat, so maybe we should let it go. Still, later on we propose one of us sitting at the abbey, the other at East Crescent and performing some sort of ridiculous re-enactment in the name of literary pedantism. Meanwhile, we have come to the foot of the steps.
“ It’s a bit like cycling up hill,” I say. “ Don’t look at the top, and just keep going.” To ease our passage I start counting the steps. I get up to 99 before losing breath, at which point Lou takes over, and we clear all 199 (or 200 as Lou counts) steps up the top of East Cliff. Recovering from jelly legs and profuse sweat we sit above the harbour and survey the rather glorious view afforded of the town at that vantage point. We watch boats bobbing out at sea, cars circling their way up the Khyber Pass, the procession of increasing tourist numbers along the seafront below us. We decide not to go to the abbey, but nose about the church and watch the bell-ringers and their curiously accurate time calls as they ring out the morning cry from the church.
We descend the steps, walk back through the town and then buy tickets for a trip on the Bark Endeavour, a miniature version of the Captain Cook’s boat moored a little further up the harbour. Our harbour-based journey is pleasant enough, but as soon as we leave the protection of its far-reaching arms we are up against the large swell on attacking waves. To our left, the waves are breaking out at sea in huge white ruffs of spray and fury, and we realise that there is a reason for the black flags we follow out. I turn to look at Lou. She’s looking distinctly green. “ It’s a bit like being at Alton Towers,” she says, as the collective “ohh!” of the landlubbers on board accompanies the trough of a particularly large wave. Heading back to land is little more fun, the push of the waves making this quarter-sized version of its inspiration surf into harbour on huge waves.
Robin Hood’s Bay is our next stop and this time I am disappointed. The first time I came here it was empty. Today, we are lucky to find somewhere to park, and are stuck behind the hulking forms of people heading down the 30% incline to the heart of the old smugglers cove.
Robin Hood’s Bay is a spoilt version of Staithes. Charming in its petite and steadfast way, linked by so many tiny snickelways it is tempting to lose oneself amongst them. However, the sheer number of people on this visit puts me off its rather romantic character, and after ice cream on the seaweed-strewn beach (using that word very lightly) we decide to head back over the moors to the Hole of Horcum and then back to York.
Our last stop at the Hole is breathtaking. In all my journeys this way, this is the first time I have stopped to appreciate the view and it is truly a astounding panorama. A glacial valley slices through the moorland, and to attest to it magnitude, the small forms of people walking its base are equivalent to small dots, nay ants. Legend has it that the hole was created by a giant who hurled the earth at his wife, missed and created the Boulby Cliffs some way off. The idea of a hulking great glacier eroding and carving away at this land suits my imagination better. The slow creak and crack of moving ice, gnawing its heavy way across the land.
York is sunny when we arrive home, and though we have only been away a day, it still has the feeling for me that I have been away for a long time. Every time I go to York I remark that it is not how it used to be. My trip away as been a reinforcement of the fact that progress is unstoppable. Be it the sea clawing away at your cliff roots, the ancient carve of glacier, or the creep of tourism, all things are transient. We must see them while we can.
Any comments (nice ones would be good) are appreciated.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
I read your blog
on 2006-10-13 01:38 am (UTC)'Tis I, Liz from golden Vag. We need to chat before you head off to Japan. Did I tell you we're hosting a foreign exchange student from Hong Kong? Maybe an asian adventure awaits us sooner rather than later.
when's a good time to call?
liz
p.s.
on 2006-10-13 01:43 am (UTC)liz again
no subject
on 2006-10-13 07:36 am (UTC)You are most welcome to come and visit the less than golden shores of North Yorkshire. I warn you that Yorkshire has one of the highest obesity rates in England (probably something to do with all the chip shops) so don't let them sit on you!
Call me anytime after about 5pm most days, but Friday - Sun is good. Maybe this Saturday afternoon (or after 7pm - Strictly Come Dancing is on - I'm obsessed)?
It takes me back....
on 2006-10-13 05:10 pm (UTC)As I read your piece, I could visulise all the places that I have been to. I remember standing with my father infront of the Captain Cook monument and my father telling me that he thought he was once Captain Cook in a past life. Some nice photo's too, I look forward to seeing the rest:-)
lol Jo (& Clive)