I’m Baaack

In the final words of the Lord of the Rings trilogy; “Well, I’m back.”

We’ve just returned from a holiday that took us back to places we had been to before. Usually, I prefer to go to somewhere new. But the memories associated with this area is so good that I couldn’t stay away.

Let’s start with our base. Filey.

I first saw this statue in 2015 and I love it. A giant fisherman staring out to sea, while a mouse creeps up on the fish wrapped in newspaper between his toes. The photo above was taken earlier this year. No, you don’t see a wrapped fish between his feet. Either the local vegans protested, or somebody hacked it off the base and stole it. Either way, shame on them.

The town is much as it was ten years ago, and that’s a large part of its charm. It can’t last forever, but right now it’s a great place. With the addition of a new gin distillery in the old smokehouse, for gin addicts.

Staithes

I have been hoping to return to Staithes for decades. I was taken there on an Open University geology field trip in the early 2000’s and loved the place. Not so much the town, though it is pretty; more the foreshore below it. Staithes marks the northern end of Yorkshire’s Jurassic coast, where the oldest fossils can be found.

Anyone wanting to go fossil hunting at Staithes needs to be aware of the tide. The rocky beach barely slopes at all, meaning that the falling tide recedes very quickly and a rising tide gives virtually no warning before you’re ankle deep in water. The advice is to start your return journey to Staithes at or before the time of low tide.

We arrived at about halfway between high and low tide, and the sea was still covering all but a narrow ledge next to the cliff. That was the other piece of advice we were given; stay away from the cliffs. Minor rockfalls rattled down the cliff and exploded on the ledge while I was on my way out towards Old Nab. I’d been adopted by an amateur geologist who was leading me out to Old Nab and on towards the Port Mulgrave headland. He wore a hard hat, but even he stayed fifteen metres away from the cliffs.

We didn’t find any remnants of the Victorian train tracks running from the old ironstone mine at Mulgrave to Staithes, but we did find fossils. I brought back one stone full of tiny fossilised shells and one small ammonite, but I couldn’t find any of the sea-lilies I found on the OU trip. We parted company halfway to Port Mulgrave; he knew a way up the cliffs near the furthest headland and I went back to Staithes, finding a brick in a rockpool along the way.

I didn’t realise what it was until I visited the Staithes Museum on my way back to the car.

Next up… Whitby.

We spent Tuesday in Whitby. This was my fifth visit and the first time I’d gone as a free-range tourist while both the abbey and the Whitby Museum were open. The first visit was after sailing from Norway in 1995. The skipper brought us in to Whitby as he claimed it was a port of last resort – if you called them up, they had to let you in. The skipper knew a lot about the town, including the fact that the best chippy shut at 9pm so we’d have to average six knots for the next few hours if we wanted a proper fish supper. He and the first mate drove the boat hard and the last few hours were rough sailing, but we made it to the mouth of the river by eight o’clock. The waves were ringing the bell on the safe haven buoy like the Devil was coming to town and the Abbey’s ruined outline was lit up on the headland above. As we were tidying the ropes to get in, a rowing boat came out from the shelter of the harbour walls with the cox howling at the crew to Pull, Pull!

This visit was a lot less frantic. We spent six hours prowling around the Abbey, the shops of Whitby and the museum in Pannett Park. I had the chance to get close to the abbey walls, spent an hour in the geology section of the museum and now have another Lazy Lemon T-shirt warning anyone who cares to read the text on my chest that I really don’t like mornings (“I’m awake. That’s as good as you’re getting today”) And there are fossils on Whitby Beach, alongside the jet (and the dog poo). The legend has it that St Hilda turned all the snakes of the area to stone and threw them into the sea, which is a fair mediaeval explanation for the coiled forms of the ammonites you can find there. I didn’t have enough time to go hunting. I must go back, maybe during the next Goth Weekend.

We were intending to travel to Scarborough by train but… trains once an hour, the next one cancelled and limited seats remaining on the rest, it didn’t sound too attractive. Park and Ride it was, then. A good choice, as the first stop was right outside the Rotunda Museum, the place I really wanted to see.

I’d been to the Rotunda in 2015 during a writers’ group meeting and always wanted to come back. Have to say that this year’s visit has cured me of that. There’s still some of the old Georgian charm in the place, but the recent refurbishment has stripped out many of the original wooden framed cases. It’s geared towards educating the kids now. Three very noisy groups of primary school children took over the place all morning, sprawled around on the floor and shrieking. We had to wait until they’d been herded off to their lunch before we could see the whole range of exhibits. It was great that the teachers led them through the basics of geology, but I miss the atmosphere of a serious Georgian museum.

We spent the rest of our visit enjoying a superb lunch at Brewed next to the Rotunda, then wandered across the Spa Bridge to see what the park was like before getting back on the bus. We would have walked on the beach if the sea hadn’t been hogging it all, or walked into the centre of Scarborough to look at the independent shops in the Market Hall and then on to the marina. But our feet were aching and we just wanted to get back to Filey for the chance to loll on the sofa with a mug of tea.

Scarborough Marina is where our sailing holiday finished in 1995. We sailed from Whitby to Scarborough in light winds and helped the skipper tie his yacht to the marina wall (the marina dries at low tide and he wanted the yacht to lean quay-wards rather than topple into the mud). We went home on the train. Easier to do in those days as we lived in London, within walking distance of a station.

The last free morning of our holiday was spent at the far end of Filey Bay. We parked at Hunmanby Gap and walked along to Reighton. The tide was coming in the whole time so we had just an hour to enjoy the walk – enough time to get to Speeton, if we hadn’t been dawdling and fossil hunting. I found a couple of Gryphaea fossils from the clay cliffs to show Himself why they’re called Devil’s Toenails.

The following day we packed up and set off for home. The weather had turned to grey October with rain threatened for next week. The trees along the route were still flying yellow and red leaves but some of the branches had been blown bare. It won’t be long before the only green in the trees will be holly and ivy leaves.