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Scarborough Cricket Ground seen from our apartment

We are back home in Sheffield after a very pleasant birthday weekend in Scarborough.

On Saturday we arrived at our apartment in Trafalgar Square. It was clean and spacious. The kitchen-lounge room overlooked Scarborough Cricket Ground which I visited long ago with my father to watch the Sir Frank Worrall XI play an England XI. I remember getting the autographs of Wes Hall, Seymour Nurse, Gary Sobers and Sir Frank Worrall himself - all famous West Indian cricketers. I must have been ten years old.

We wandered around the shops in the upper part of the town and had some tea and snacks in a corner cafe then we went to "The Sun Inn" to watch the Rugby League play-off final between Castleford and Leeds. It was a noisy and unpleasant establishment but we stuck it out to the end. Leeds won convincingly.

Then we went to seek a curry and ended up in the Tikka Tika restaurant on Castle Road. The meals were scrummy. Afterwards we had another drink but this time in The Tennyson Arms where a singer with backing tapes was crooning the night along.

On Sunday morning we were out of the door at nine thirty. We visited the grave of Anne Bronte in St Mary's churchyard. She was the youngest of the Bronte sisters. She died on May 28th 1849 at the tender age of twenty nine after battling with pulmonary tuberculosis. It was the same condition that had taken her sister Emily just six months before.

Anne Bronte's grave

Then up to Scarborough Castle on the headland. Historically, it is a very interesting place. There was a Bronze Age settlement there. Later the Romans came and built a signal station. Then the Normans built a castle that was developed further through the next five hundred years. It was bombarded by parliamentary forces during the English Civil War and later still, in World War One, it was shelled by German warships. There's a lot of History to take in but it helped that we joined a guided tour with a knowledgeable volunteer called Andy. For more about Scarborough Castle go here.

The castle seen from the Roman signal station

Down to North Bay then along Marine Drive that circles the headland. Marine Drive was opened with much pomp and ceremony in 1908 and is a tremendous feat of civil engineering given the cruel way in which the sea batters the headland every winter. It had to be built very strong indeed.

The Grand Hotel, Scarborough

We had reached South Bay with its two harbours. There was more aimless wandering about to be done before we climbed back to the upper town and traditional Sunday lunch in "The Scarborough Arms". Delicious. Shirley declined dessert but I treated myself to homemade apple pie with ice cream.

Then we got the car and headed out of town to Irton Moor where generations of my family lived and worked in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. I felt their presence and later I walked along the path that they had proceeded upon into St John the Baptist Church in East Ayton for baptisms, weddings, funerals and countless Sunday services.

Where generations of my family lived and worked

We also visited the ruin of Ayton Castle before jumping in the car and heading up the coast to Ravenscar. With boots on we strolled along the clifftop, relishing the view to Robin Hood's Bay. Ravenscar is a rather strange place. A nineteenth century entrepreneur wished to turn it into a significant seaside resort but the grand plan never quite came off. For more about Ravenscar go here. 

Cliffs at Ravenscar

Then back to Scarborough and a couple of pints in "The Angel" watching England beat Lithuania 1-0 in the final  World Cup group game before descending to Foreshore Road on South Bay once more for golden  fish and chips in The Golden Grid.

We didn't get back to our apartment until after ten. Though cloudy, it had been a great day and a wonderful way to mark my sixty fourth birthday. I am now officially a boring old git. Tomorrow - the old git takes you down the coast to Filey.

Scarborough rooftops

64

I could be handy, mending a fuse

When your lights have gone

You can knit a sweater by the fireside

Sunday mornings go for a ride

Doing the garden, digging the weeds

Who could ask for more?

Will you still need me, will you still feed me

When I'm sixty-four?

Scarborough

Scarborough was England's first true seaside resort.  It was attracting  wealthy visitors from the end of the seventeenth century But in the middle of  the nineteenth century the railway line from York began to bring in visitors from Yorkshire's industrial towns and cities. Mass tourism had begun.

Throughout that time there was a farm on Irton Moor just west of Scarborough. It is called Riggs Head and it still exists today. It was here that my ancestors on my father's side lived and worked. They never owned the farm, they just lived there as farm workers raising their families through several generations. In documents, my great great grandfather was described as a rabbit catcher and his place of residence was indeed Riggs Head.

Naturally, I feel a special bond with Scarborough and its environs. Though I have never lived there myself, I sense there's still some Scarborough in my blood. My late father could recall childhood visits to Riggs Head in the nineteen twenties though by that time his own father had left the land to become a railway worker based fifteen miles away in Malton.

This afternoon, Shirley and I are driving up to Scarborough for a couple of nights. I have booked a little apartment overlooking the town's famous cricket ground. The weather forecast isn't too bad for early October. 

I hope we'll walk on the beach, visit the castle on the headland and perhaps drive up to Riggs Head even though I  know it is has changed a lot through the passage of time. Hopefully, we'll have a nice Sunday lunch somewhere.

Below, an old railway poster anticipates our brief sojourn in "The Queen of the Yorkshire Coast".

Arch

Rambling just outside The Peak District national park, yesterday afternoon, I stopped for a moment to look at my map. As I was doing so, something caught my eye up the adjacent wooded slope...

It was an old stone arch, poking above the surrounding foliage. I scrambled up the slope to take a closer look.

It was and is a noble piece of architecture. Behind it, beneath the undergrowth, I could see the foundations of stone walls. Clearly the arched structure had just been the valley-facing facade of a substantial building. But what was it for?

At first I thought it might simply have been a rich landowner's folly but then I spotted a capped hole in the ground. The evidence clicked in my mind. It must have been the engine house of an old lead mine with the engine being used to pump water from the mine and perhaps also to winch miners up and down the pit shaft.

The capped mine shaft at Mill Close Mine

When I got home, I used Google to lead me to the knowledge that it was indeed a Victorian engine house belonging to the most significant and productive lead mine in Britain - Mill Close Mine. This mine operated right up until 1938 when so much flooding occurred that the mine had to be closed for good.

Visitors to The Peak District are often unaware of Derbyshire's rich lead mining history. There are no mines today but the historical evidence is everywhere. It goes way back beyond Roman times. In fact the very reason that Romans came to Derbyshire was to exploit its lead reserves. Large quantities of that lead finished up back in Rome itself.

There are numerous quaint limestone villages in The Peak District but the cute little cottages you will often see were once the homes of humble lead-mining people. Appearances can be deceptive. Once the cramped rooms accommodated large, hard-working families who were often on the brink of destitution but nowadays the same cottages are home to retired people from the city or second homes that are rented out to holidaying country lovers.

Adam

Meet our new pet. It's Adam and he's a giant house spider. He appeared in our house a few days ago. We guess that Adam is a stray or perhaps an asylum seeker. If he is indeed an asylum seeker, he's lucky because he is now living in one.

Adam seems to spend most of his time beneath our sofas but in the evening he likes to run around - traversing our carpet like an Olympic athlete. I put the television zapper next to Adam to give you a better sense of his size. Then he ran off under the television. 

Perhaps Adam is simply shy or maybe fearful that we might crush him to death. But there's no chance of that. Shirley and I are both arachnophiles. House spiders are helpful assistants in any home. They will consume any small insects they encounter - keeping one's residence flea, ant and cockroach free!

In fact, I am rather surprised that house spiders are not advertised for sale in the media. Somebody is missing a great business opportunity. However, I guess that spiders generally have a bad press. Some people - our daughter included - are arachnophobic.

They don't realise that spiders like Adam make great pets... Oh just a minute, he's emerging from under the coffee table as I type. "Here boy! Come to daddy Adam! Oh how sweet!" He's just climbed up my leg and now he's sitting just below the laptop screen. "Coo-chee coo-chee coo! Who's a pretty boy?"

See? I told you it was an asylum!

Sleeplessness

Normally I sleep like a log. Most nights I sleep for a solid seven or eight hours. However, once in a while for whatever reason I just can't get off to sleep or I wake up in the middle of the night and find I cannot return to sleep's embrace. 

Lying in bed waiting for sleep to come is very frustrating. You count sheep or review the previous day. You try to recite the NATO phonetic alphabet in your head... or the signs of the zodiac... or the states of America. But still sleep won't come. You change your sleeping position but an hour passes by and still sleep will not envelop you.

Finally...finally you accept the fact that it's time to get out of bed and go downstairs.

Do you recognise this my friend? Have you been there too? What do you do when you get up sleepless in the middle of the night?

I go to the kitchen and make a mug of tea in one of my favoured Hull City mugs. I grab a couple of McVities ginger nut biscuits from the tall cupboard and go into the front room. I put the TV on to watch BBC World News and switch on this laptop to surf the net once again.

Sitting here in the middle of the night an hour passes by. I switch off the computer and the TV and go back upstairs. I climb back into bed as carefully as possible so as not to disturb her ladyship and after a minute or two sleep at last takes me to its sweet forgetfulness once more and to its valleys where dreams are waiting in the sleepy shadows.

What do you do?

Toad

Macbeth - Act I, scene i First Witch  Where the place? Second Witch  Upon the heath. Third Witch There to meet with Macbeth. First Witch   I come, Graymalkin! Second Witch  Paddock calls. . In misty legends that William Shakespeare clearly knew about, witches customarily had animate companions or "familiars". The first witch's familiar was a cat called Graymalkin. The second witch had a toad... called Paddock.