A day beside the seaside

You’ll know that we waved ‘Goodbye’ to Emily this week.  She’s arrived in South Korea,  jet-lagged and exhausted, but not so much that she can’t send snippets of up-beat information about her new life as Emily-in-Busan.

While she was with us, Emily-in-Barcelona briefly became Emily-in-London, Emily-in-Bolton, and Emily-in-Yorkshire. And while she was with us, Boyfriend-from-Barcelona came to visit.  What should we show someone from a vibrantly busy city, one of whose attractions is several kilometres of golden, sunny, sandy beaches?  Well, on a frosty, gusty February day, with more than a threat of snow in the air, what could be better than a day beside the seaside?

Whitby: the view anyone who's been there would recognise.
Whitby: the view anyone who’s been there would recognise.

Whitby seemed to fit the bill.  Picturesque fishermen’s cottages huddled round the quay.  A clutter of narrow cobbled shopping lanes – a tourist mecca to rival Las Ramblas.  A sandy beach with donkey-rides, and the chance to find fossil remains etched into the cliffs or a morsel of jet washing about on the sands.  A ruined Benedictine Abbey high above the town, the inspiration for Bram Stoker’s ‘Dracula’, and the focus of a twice-yearly Goth music festival.  And fish and chips.  Always fish and chips at an English seaside destination.  Emily and Miquel explored the lot.

Whitby Abbey.
Whitby seen from St. Mary’s Church, next to the Abbey.
The old town.
The abbey and church seen from a ginnel.
The beach.
The beach.
The beach – again.
A close view of those cliffs.
One of the hundreds of gulls, thousands of gulls, reasy to steal your fish and chips with no warning.
And just before we left … a little bit of rainbow.

And Miquel, windblown and chilled to his fingertips, declared that it had been a fine day out, with the added bonus of being firmly inside the car when we journeyed home across the North York Moors as the snow began to fall.

Best to be back in the car when the weather's like this.
Best to be back in the car when the weather’s like this.

Author: margaret21

I'm retired and living in North Yorkshire, where I walk as often as I can, write, volunteer, and travel as often as I can.

19 thoughts on “A day beside the seaside”

  1. I loved reading this! Beautiful photos – and you said ‘ginnel’!! i haven’t heard that word in decades! I am a Lancashire lass but I married a Yorkshireman (Dad never forgave me 😂) and he insists it’s a snicket!

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  2. Snicket for me….grew up in Huddersgrot (as Malcolm used to call it)…glad to hear EiB safe and well!

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  3. What a fine day. Emily and Miguel certainly had a good time exploring. Did they find any jet? The sun is shining here and it feels oddly like spring. The yard is muddy and we must wipe the dog’s paws before she comes inside. Always lots to do – cheers.

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  4. Nothing like a day at the seaside and especially mid-winter, it’s a January ritual for me, always go to the sea on my birthday and remember the coming and past seasons 🙂 Love your pics, thanks for sharing!

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      1. And you know in the south here, we often rely on sunshine 🙂 I made a lunch reservation at a seafront restaurant and they asked if we wanted to sit in or out! I said window seat indoors and was amazed to find more people eating outdoors than in, it was a stunning end of January day and the walk along the cliffs afterwards just perfect, a little wind but that ever reliable sunshine 🙂

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  6. Lovely piece! Enjoyed it a lot. Whitby was a brilliant idea. Growing up in Leeds, I used and heard ginnel all the time and it’s still the word that comes to mind for what the illustration shows. Now South Korea is somewhere I have very little knowledge of and very few preconceptions about. Could your Emily be nudged into an occasional blog of her own do you think, or is that a gene she hasn’t inherited?

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    1. Glad to hear you’re a ‘ginnel’ person! Yes, Emily already has a blog which I think she’ll have to re-name, as it’s currently called ‘Speaking Spanglish’. You may have read her post about the move to Korea in my last post before this one.

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  7. A grand day out indeed. We say snicket in Bradford which completely flummoxed my southern husband who couldn’t provide a word for it. Living in E Sussex I’ve had to learn to call it a twitten if I want to be understood.

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    1. A twitten? That’s a new one on me, and a lovely one. Surely Jeremy needs a word for this urban feature? He can pick his own, but he must have one.

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  8. was wondering why twitten sounded a bit familiar and then remembered from visits to Lewes long ago that there are lots of them there, and that Lewes’ most famous son has one named after him – Tom Paine’s Twitten.

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