A family holiday to Yorkshire.

I was hoping for a calm and relaxing holiday with very few outings, as I am currently working on a few stories. I also had two new batman graphic novels that I wanted to read.

We had found a very large cottage just on the outskirts of the North York moors. It included:

• 6 bedrooms (4 doubles and 2 twins)
• tennis court
• games room (full size snooker table)
• vegetable patch
• small apple orchard
• football area

Scarborough

During breakfast on our second day we decided to drive to Scarborough. The sat-nav had predicted it would take about 1hour 30mins and on the way we had to deal with a 25% grade incline which was a bit scary (It’s located just before Sutton Bank National Park Centre).

When we arrived in Scarborough we had no clue where we were going to park the cars. We eventually found a small car park close to a fish and chip cafe. I had never tried battered haddock before so I thought I’d give it try; I didn’t know then that this would lead me to have a fish meal at every pub we visited during the holiday. After we had eaten our fish and chips - with two members of the family accidentally confusing sugar for salt - we headed back to the cottage.

Scarborough: the second visit

As the first trip to Scarborough was a flying visit (no, we didn’t fly there, that would be silly…), we got up early and headed for a car park that we spotted as we left the town the day before. My brother and I decided to head up to Scarborough Castle while the rest of the family went on a bit of a mooch through the shops on the seafront.

Scarborough Castle

The Castle is situated on top of a hill by the coast. We had to climb a snaking walkway to get to the castle’s entrance (kind-of almost falling over after about the fifth step), and upon entering we were not impressed (we discovered, to our disappointment, that 2/3 of the ‘castle’ consists of a crumbling ruin).

I had to explain to my brother that during the Civil War, Oliver Cromwell ordered all strongholds or fortifications to be partly destroyed so that they could not be occupied by the royalists. This is why many older castles are in ruins.

Mooching around the shops

After having a look around the remains of the castle, we went back down to the seafront to have a look around some shops.

The hunt for birds of prey

Lightwater Valley

As we pulled off the main road to continue to the parking area of Lightwater Valley, we realised that this was a ‘theme park’ that had a bird show on the side - not what we had expected. However, we quickly found that the park was closed as the summer season was ending, meaning the bird show was also a no-show.

Fortunately, we had an alternative location to visit that had a birds of prey show, so all was not lost:

Thorp Perrow Arboretum

This was more like what we were looking for - a very large estate with really nice gardens and a stream running into a small lake (big pond). The gardens were so large that we didn’t actually make it all the way to the birds of prey, however I did enjoy walking through the trees and around the small lake (big pond).

If I ever head back to the area, I will be visiting again.

I wonder what’s in…

On our last full day, we chose to go for a drive to Bridlington.

Bridlington

I wasn’t sure where the best place to stop would be, so i set my sat-nav destination to a randomly selected road along the seafront. When we arrived, we quickly found a place to park the cars and take a look around.

Unfortunately, the coast here was not to our liking to so we decided to head up to Filey.

Filey

Again, I took a gamble by setting the sat-nav to take me to a road that runs beside the seafront. As we drove along we didn’t spot any shops or any other reason to stop.

We were on the way back to the cottage, about to write off the day, when I thought it would be no bad thing to just head back up to Scarborough.

Scarborough: the final visit

This visit was a lot better than the previous two, particularly as I had by this time spotted a convenient car park that was very close to a few coffee shops and amusements.

We had a mooch within a discount ‘pound-stretching’ shop, then stopped for a coffee and a bit of cake. After our fill of refreshments, we tried our luck at some of the arcade games (I don’t like leaving a beach without winning a toy from a claw machine), before heading off back to the cottage.

The drive back home

We left the cottage at about 9am. The weather was horrible, raining all the way home. At some points I could barely see the white lines dividing the lanes on the motorway. The spray from the cars and HGV’s that we passed made things even worse.

Did I enjoy my holiday?

I’m not a big fan of family holidays, mainly because everyone wants to spend a holiday doing different things and compromises need to be made.

I did enjoy the peaceful weekend, driving through narrow county roads, seeing the wonderful scenery that Yorkshire has to offer and I did get to read my two batman graphic novels.