Pictures of Whitby

Just a few random ones that didn't make their way into a blog proper ... 

Where we were staying - a cottage with no access by road and spread over four floors - punishing on the knees, but with the considerable compensation of wonderful views. 

'What views?' asks Ted

Well, these ...

This is the market place, where we encountered a boredom of teenagers on a school trip, still being taught at quarter past eight in the evening. 

This was Ted's favourite place, the harbour, where we sat and ate chips and mushy peas.

Even starving gulls didn't fancy mine.

I can't think why.

I loved the alley ways, which weren't called snickets or ginnels as you might expect, but courts, yards and ghauts. (No idea how you say the last.) 

And I enjoyed the quirk. (Always like a bit of quirk.)

Homage to Jonny Fluffypunk

Overall, it was pretty ... 

but with a bleakness that suited our mood, post Referendum.

Kirkham Priory and Yorkshire Honey from Galgate

Up north all those days and somehow I'd missed seeing my mate, Jill, who was down in Shropshire. Bally poor timing.  But Jill, being resilient and resourceful, arranged at the last moment for us to meet up at Kirkham Priory, between Malton and York.  So we did. 

And it was beautiful.  












Like Bolton Abbey with its legend of the drowning of William de Romilly (the Boy of Egremont), Kirkham Priory is also associated with a premature death, that of the son of Walter l'Espec who was killed when his horse was startled by a boar. That incident led to his father founding the abbey in his remembrance in the 1120s.

The still impressive gatehouse was built almost two centuries later, c1290-5. 

This is John Piper's depiction, dating from 1988.

We arrived before Jill so had a wander about.

 

When Jill arrived, we popped into the gift shop to get some coffee and ice cream, and I sniffed out a couple of gifts for my parents. I have to say, the jars of Yorkshire honey from Galgate puzzled me. I know Galgate - it's the nearest village to the campus of the University of Lancaster, where I was a student in the early 1980s. And it's in Lancashire.

'Ah, but they're Yorkshire bees,' said the woman at the till.

And then we sat for a bit and contemplated the ruins. Something of which we've done a lot lately.

Staithes, Runswick Bay and Royston Vasey

A week of wandering around Yorkshire like ghosts at our own wake, interspersed with reports of a massive increase in hate crime, and we were looking forward to going home and the distraction of work. 

First, though, a visit to Staithes - another picturesque village at the bottom of a steep hill with a pub advertising Strongbow on the blackboard outside like it was Thompstone's or Sheppy's Dabinett.  

Oh but it was quite fetching. And being the designated driver, I was on Diet Coke anyway. 

We wandered about a bit, then walked up the wrong street by mistake on the way back to the car. 

Rather than go down again and then back up, we took the scenic route around the head of the valley to the car park.

Then on to Runswick Bay, another picturesque village at the bottom of a steep hill with a cafe with a rubbish line in gifts for elderly parents you are cross with because they voted Leave when their children and grandchildren all wanted to stay in the EU. 

I blame the Daily Mail.

On the plus side, there were moon daisies and cranesbill ...  

... and wonderfully ochreous cliffs at the far end of the beach. 

My haul of fossils was a bit crap, though ...

... and when we got back to the cottage, a local took a pop at us for taking up a parking place he reckoned should be for residents, not holiday makers. Even the Northerner in his broadest Yorkshire couldn't appease him. Which was laughable, really, as just beforehand, while he was dropping some bags off into the house opposite, his wife had told us they didn't live there. But there you go - everyone's got a licence to be a bastard now.