A few hardy souls braved a distinctly cold and windy Yorkshire beach.
Definitely felt like Autumn.
Definitely looked like Autumn. The small rides, the cafes, the ice cream vans had mostly all closed down and boarded up for the year. No more intrepid crazy golfers until next year.
I wonder what it feels like to be a resident here in Filey right now. Sadness that the summer season is over with the crowds departed OR relief to get their seaside town back again. The chance to walk quietly along the seafront again, to breathe.
I guess it’s a similar feeling that this time of year brings to our little hilltop village. With no village shop or school or pub or cafe. A church with only one service a month. It’s not unusual to not see another village soul for week upon week upon week. The short days, bleak weather and zero street lighting all ramp up the feelings. So what’s it going to be this time around. Peaceful solitude or suffocating isolation…..
I don’t know just how many times I’ve driven past this reservoir and never stopped. Decade after decade of driving past here, always wondering what it’s like. Well finally, with Hawklad, Scaling Dam became the destination. Now I know.
It’s one of those reservoirs that looks natural apart from one side which is a bit too artificial.
I once knew someone who bought a sailing boat here. Apparently he saw an advert for it in a newspaper. Yes that was in the time before THE INTERNET….
He had no interest in sailing, I mean ZERO interest. To my knowledge he never once sailed his craft, it just sat tethered to where he found it. Yet virtually every Sunday he would drive here and spend hours sat on board. He would do nothing apart from eat his packed lunch and just relax. It worked for him. Maybe it saved him. I know that he had suffered from mental health issues for years. I remember at least two breakdowns and one suicide attempt. Nothing seemed to work for him. But suddenly on this boat, he found a place he could relax. A place he could actually enjoy. He talked about finally having something to look forward to, something he could rely on. This made such a difference to him. The last time we spoke he had even started to plan his next unmoving boat purchase. This time somewhere warm, maybe The Mediterranean.
Whitby on the Yorkshire coast. Famed because of Captain Cook and Dracula, not many places can claim that….
Whisper it, I read Bram Stokers vampire novel when I was about 12. I had just started Senior School and on the way home would walk past a little dusty old library. A tiny place, maybe not much bigger than a large living room. With so few books, I quickly exhausted the readable options. But on one visit, as I desperately tried to find something new to read, I noticed sat on the returned counter, a little book with DRACULA emblazoned across a gothic cover which had clearly seen way better days. Picking up the courage, I sandwiched the horror book between a couple of nondescript nonfiction books and hoped. Hoped the librarian wouldn’t notice. It was noticed….
A long over the top of the glasses, Paddington stare, was followed by clearly a few moments contemplation. Unbelievably the book was then stamped with the quiet warning…. ‘Don’t have nightmares…’
Little did the Librarian know, in-fact little did my Parents know, that for months I had been sneaking down stairs on a Friday night to watch the late night Hammer Horror movie on TV. As a result I was already well versed in Christopher Lee’s Dracula.
The book didn’t give me nightmares. But I loved it. I loved it because for the first time I was reading a story set in a place that I knew, a place where I had been. The book came alive to me, it still does.
Move forward several decades and I was summoned to see the Teacher at Hawklad’s first school. The Teacher was concerned that I had let my 7 year old watch horror movies. Hawklad had in class told the Teacher that he loved watching Dracula, Werewolf and Frankenstein. One little detail that Hawklad had left out was the name Scooby Doo. Scooby meets Dracula, Scooby meets Werewolf, Scooby meets….
On a sunny day like this one, Whitby even with a Dracula Museum, is probably as intimidating as a Scooby Doo cartoon. But come back here during winter, when a nighttime storm is battering the Port, when a thick fog has descended. Then try reading Dracula and not feel just a little bit on edge. That book can still bite…..
For a relatively small land, Switzerland often feels like it has so much space.
Sometimes we can have too much space….
When Hawklad was at Nursery and First School he had plenty of friends but things change.
Aspergers, going from a Tiny School to a huge Main School, Covid Insolation, Home Schooling, Rural Life, LIFE.
Currently Hawklad now finds himself self with only one Friend he has contact with, and that is only sporadically. Been like that for over 4 years now. No sign that position will change imminently.
A thought struck me as we ambled towards the light. I would have loved to have done something like this with my Dad. Don’t get me wrong, we occasionally had trips out, but they were pretty rare. Looking back to my childhood I can still count the trips. I remember Dad taking me to see the 125 High Speed Locomotive, back then it looked like a Space Age Rocket rather than a Passenger Train as it passed through Darlington Station. I remember a trip to a Train Museum where I found an old ticket machine that dished out things that looked like raffle tickets. As we walked around the museum he eagerly checked out each steam train while I trailed a few paces behind. There was another trip to see a charity cricket match featuring the sporting legend Fred Truman. That was the trip Dad sent me into the players showers to get Fred’s autograph…. Not sure that’s happening these days…. A few trips to the coast to see a storm, sat in Dad’s banged out car, I’m eating chips while Dad is silently smoking.
The whole family would have an annual trip to Scarborough. Dad would frequently disappear for most of the days to do his thing. I can remember seeing him sat on a bench some distance away from the rest of the family as they tried to stop me from falling off the Donkey Rides on the beach.
That’s it, I can’t remember any other trips with Dad. Definitely no walks through a Forest….
To be completely fair, back then in our northern working class town travel was way less accessible. Few cars, even rarer aircraft tickets…
At home there was similarly limited Dad time. Dad might be briefly pulled away from reading the newspaper to talk, I might get a few words before he buried his head back into the racing and obituary pages. As Dad listened to his radio on an evening I would clearly annoy him with interruptions, you just know when someone wants you to shut up. Volunteering to take him a cup of tea to him while he sat in his Greenhouse might yield me a few minutes being told all about how to grow tomatoes or raspberries. Even when I was sent on a Sunday to the local Pub to tell Dad that his meal was getting cold, I would be lucky to get a brief nod before I was pointed in the direction of the door. On the way home again I trailed a few paces behind while. We just didn’t talk that much. So few chats with Dad.
Those times were so frustrating to me. I would have loved ME TIME with DAD, yet in reality MY DAD TIME felt very distanced. I’m sure it wasn’t the case but it just felt like I was often a nuisance, a bit in the way, an interruption to Dad’s routines.
The end result was I always felt distant from him. He didn’t understand me and I didn’t really know him. I knew he liked trains, liked cricket, he liked fishing, he liked gardening, he liked beer, he smoked, he was in the army. Looking back, I now realise that he wasn’t happy, probably chronically depressed and I still don’t know him. I will never know him.
Scarborough Castle on the tropical Yorkshire coast.
An exposed seaside hill, great strategic yet horrible comfort location. Wind, rain, mist, wind, rain, mist, wind, rain, mist, never ending cycle here. The Weather, Vikings, Baron infighting, Tudor rebellions, a civil war and a WW1 Naval bombardment has taken its toll. Hawklad pointed out that he couldn’t understand why the German Navy didn’t invade this undefended part of the country. Plus given it’s Scarborough, the invading forces could have been here for years without anyone realising. It could have been the first successful invasion in over 700 years. A few boats, land on the beach, avoid the seagulls, rent a few holiday cottages, start to order a few bratwurst sausages from the local Spar shop, invasion sorted, course of history probably changed.
But sadly walking around here in the cold, windy drizzle, thoughts navigate back to more somber thoughts. This castle sat on this bleak cliff, show the marks of history over centuries. I wonder what any ghosts walking these ruins would say when they see we are still doing the same things, still making the same mistakes.
Evening trip to the coast. Park up at Filey on the North Yorkshire coast and then head north for a couple of miles along the cliff tops.
Destination… Filey Brigg
That was Plan B….
We had initially planned to head into Filey and walk along the beach but…
As we headed towards the beach, Hawklad froze. There were a couple of teenagers sat on a bench eating chips and he thought that they were possibly looking at him. That was it, he couldn’t walk towards them, he had to head away from them, as fast as possible. So with the beach path blocked, he pulled this hoody firmly over his head and we rapidly headed in the other direction along the cliffs.
He has always struggled with the sensation of being looked at by strangers. As a child he would frequently hide behind trees to avoid being noticed. Now he makes a real effort to dress in such a way that doesn’t draw attention to himself. He likes the comfort of his personal space and he definitely needs the comfort of blending in, being invisible. That’s why he can survive football or concert crowds, he feels blended into the background, unseen with people completely focused on other things. So he can sit reasonably comfortably in a crowd of 50000 yet be frozen to the spot by just two teenagers. Thankfully the only eye contact after that was with angry looking seagulls….
Another late evening trip out for Hawklad, this time a couple of hours drive to the beautiful Peak District. It might well have been quicker but I managed to get lost in the dreaded Yorkshire Twilight Zone, otherwise known as the city Sheffield’s road network.
On the bright side, while lost we discovered a Dunkin Donuts store. One of those occasions where I happily ignore any gluten issues I may have for the GREATER GOOD….
The downside of evening trips is that you can far too quickly start to run out of light, BUT for those couple of hours, having somewhere as amazing as this place basically to ourselves, absolutely wonderful for Hawklad.
The Lighthouse at Flamborough Head. Still going strong after 200 years.
I like lighthouses, they are simple to understand. You see one and know exactly what you are going to get….
We sat down to watch a movie last night, Fight Club. As I sat with my coffee I was ready for a couple of hours about boxing, maybe unlicensed, probably featuring an underground boxing club. Think Rocky mixed with Dead Poets Society.
I won’t give the plot away but how wrong was I with that assumption. It was like sitting down to watch a harmless romantic comedy like Notting Hill and then finding out it’s actually a slasher horror film set on a Space Ship.
After the movie Hawklad said that this time, the real movie entertainment was watching my increasingly confused and bewildered expression.
It’s just me, I don’t get out much these days 😂😂😂😂😂
As a child I lived in a seaside town that was bizarrely lacking in water. We were definitely a bit short of streams, lakes, ponds and rivers. One really big river but that was many many miles away. No streams….. If you wanted water then it was about walking for 40 minutes to get to the beach. Yes the local park had a boating lake, but that lake had more shopping trolleys than water. Maybe that’s why I now have a real soft spot for villages built around water.
That’s definitely why I always love walking around Thornton-le-Dale.
My Partner’s Mum used to live here. One evening we were walking around the village when we came across a well dressed chap pulling himself out of a stream. He was an absolute state, dripping wet. As we asked if he was alright, he muttered something about ‘daydreaming and suddenly finding himself falling into water’. I’m not sure he was so enamoured with village streams.
A Dad trying to cope with the loss of his Partner and becoming a single parent. 