Travelling by road in the UK is easier than people think it will be. The network of dual carriage A roads is a real boon and it does appear that they have been sympathetically planted so that you can see the views and it also goes some way to protecting local residents from the road noise; although probably not far enough, if our experience of the caravan park at Cromwell is anything to go by.
All this is to explain that getting from one place to another that is quite far away is reasonably straightforward. So our journey from Cromwell to Robin Hood's Bay was simple - apart from when the GPS took us through some very narrow roads that it had deemed were shorter/faster than A roads. And of course the descent into the top of the bluff that the main town/village of Robin Hood's Bay sits on - aaarrrggghhh!!!
Very
steep, very narrow, very winding therefore very nerve-wracking given
it's a tourist destination with potential for lots of traffic of the big
kind: motorhomes, caravans. We were safe from lots of traffic because
we are not yet in the high season ...
We found the Middlewood
Caravan Park courtesy of said GPS - and then proceeded to faff about
finding a site that was level. The first one we were directed to was
most unlevel and covered with large gravel which was too skid-inducing
to be able to get up on to the levellers. So we moved to a grass site. A
good move as it transpired because on the former we would have lost the
sun by about 6pm instead of keeping it until it eventually set at about
9.45pm. And we had full sun all day from early morning. Result!
I made a curry for dinner - David says it was from nothing, i.e. I performed magic. But no I didn't. I just used what was available: some of Irene's spices, a can of coconut milk, tomato paste, tomatoes, onion, potatoes, capsicum, peas - whose bag had to be prised carefully off the bottom of the freezer compartment after thawing and refreezing down at Eastaway Manor when the fridge was on gas in the sunshine ... Still and all it was yummy with enough left over for David's dinner the next night (I had breakfast for dinner instead...)
After brunch (beans and egg on toast plus a very naughty but yummy slice of bacon for me) the next morning we set off to walk to the beach.
Out through the back of
the caravan site and then along a former railway track, out to the road
and then along to the steep bit.
Bucolic scene, two of these are small draft horses. |
Business owners and rich people's houses at the top of the hill. |
The North Sea!! |
The south part of the bay from the end of the old rail track walk |
It was the quintessential village at the bottom of the cliff - all the workers' tiny cottages cheek by jowl down the hill and the business owners in spacious homes up the top on the flat. Robin Hood's Bay was a fishing village and a smugglers' haven.
Approaching the end of the upper level of the village - David still has his stick... |
If we thought the road to the campsite
was steep and narrow, this revised our opinion. I could have got the
motorhome down and I could have turned around at the bottom (3 point
turn) but why!
At the top of the steep descent |
A gargoyle above a garage door - nowhere near wide enough for a car, but probably fitted a cart years ago. |
Low tide at the beach which definitely doesn't look like a beach. But the icecream van is there... |
A superfluity of photos of David and me follows...
David had finished his icecream - did he have his stick in hand? |
Apparently the tide covers all of this right up to where David and I were standing for the photos. |
He didn't have 50p to move the binoculars. Does he have his stick? |
Now it is a tourist destination and well worth a visit and an explore. Many people stay a week there in B&Bs or holiday cottages. A few pubs to visit and quite a lot of interesting history and sights close by: walking, biking, driving.
However we have decided we are very poor tourists so a week would be 5 days too long for us.
But
we did want to see Whitby Abbey, so as we left Robin Hood's Bay, that's
where we headed - with a slight detour back closer to RHB town so David
could go and see if he could find the walking pole that he left behind
somewhere the day before...
Success - he'd left it in the shop where he'd surreptitiously gone to pay for a sweatshirt that I bought. So the on line purchase of another matching pair the evening before was accomplished but unnecessary ...😆😜
3 comments:
Isn’t RHB lovely albeit very steep…loved Staithes too. As a matter of trivia… do you know the difference between a gargoyle and a grotesque? The former is used to direct water away from buildings (and the word comes from the French, gargouille, meaning ‘throat’), while the latter is simply an ornament that has no function other than decoration! So your gargoyle is actually a grotesque!
Ahhh, Robin Hood Bay! My Dad won an award for a building he designed there back in the 70's. You will most certainly have walked right past it, but sadly it has been altered out of recognition now. Glad you had chilled medication and found the walking pole.
Pip
Aha, a grotesque - good name. Thanks, Bernice!
And Pip, RHB is lovely - I wish I'd known which building your dad had designed!
I was pleased the stick was recovered too. I was dreading having to tell Ian and Irene that we had mislaid it ...
Mxx
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