To kick off what ended up being the best part of a full week of brilliant birthday celebrations, I took advantage of having a couple of days off work. When I was a child, we used to have summer holidays in Scarborough and Whitby because my parents used to live in that neck of the woods when they were first married. It had been a while since I'd been to the North East coast, so it was a lovely little trip down memory lane and exactly what I needed after some stressful days in work.
We started the jaunt with a road trip to Whitby, which featured some utterly vile rain and a terrifyingly vertical ascent through the North Yorkshire Moors National Park. When we finally arrived, the weather hadn't cleared up much, so we went for a wander to find the fish and chip shop with the shortest wait for a table in their cafe. Although ideally chips should be eaten on a bench overlooking the water, the rain was not conducive to this kind of holiday traditionalism. No worries, we had plenty of time over the next couple of days for eating al fresco. After lunch, it was time for a wander through the cobbled streets of shops on our way up to Whitby Abbey. Of course we had to stop at every single bookshop we passed (and there were plenty), and Shaun was wonderfully patient as I walked around touching the spines of books before leaving without buying anything.
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| Snapping away like a pro. He can do more with a phone camera than I could ever do with a DSLR. |
Monday dawned hot and sunny, and it was a struggle to drag myself away from the balcony's beautiful view in order to make the most of the cooked buffet breakfast before heading out to enjoy the weather.
But not before we went for a roam around the incredibly impressive hotel. The Royal doesn't look like much from the outside but with an interior like this, that hardly matters.
Scarborough is a much bigger seaside-y place than Whitby and there's an awful lot to do and see, but those things aren't necessarily always very close together. Especially if, like us, you only have the vaguest of ideas about where things are, you'll end up doing a lot of walking. Of course walking isn't so bad when the sun is shining and you have the beautiful coastal views to entertain you.
There were two things on my Scarborough wish-list that I insisted we just had to do. One was boating on the lake at Peasholme Park, and the other was an ice cream at the Harbour Bar. Both are things I remember from childhood holidays and definitely very typically Scarborough pursuits.
After a lot of debate over whether we wanted to take the infinitely cooler but slightly too easy option of a dragon-shaped pedalo or to try actually rowing, we opted for the challenge. It turns out rowing is not quite as easy as it looks, and we spent a lot of time going around in circles and banging into walls. Every time Shaun seemed to get into some kind of rhythm with it, I would insist on having a turn with the oars and all his good work would be undone. By some miracle, we managed to complete a full lap of the boating lake in only five minutes more than our allotted half an hour. I would call that a roaring success.
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| Basically the only photo of me rowing in which I don't look very confused or utterly demented. Not my forte. |
We strolled down the other side of the hill, past the site of Anne Bronte's grave, to hit up my second Scarborough must - the Harbour Bar. As a child, this place intrigued me like no other...mostly because it was the home of the world's largest ice cream cones that I was never allowed to have. I'm talking cones the length of your forearm, no exaggeration. It's really no wonder my parents were sceptical about letting little Hannah loose on them; adult Hannah decided it was a ridiculous idea and plumped instead for a classic knickerbocker glory. It was totally worth it, purely for the nostalgia value.
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| What an appropriate sign. |
What are your best holiday memories from childhood? Let me know in the comments!
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