surfing – A Dad trying to cope with the loss of his Partner and becoming a single parent.

Nearly the longest day and it still doesn’t feel like it’s nearly summer. A walk along the bitingly cold Yorkshire Coast.

These are really unstable cliffs. After high tides and especially after storms, you will see intrepid fossil hunters scouring the base of the rocks for fragments of a past world. Locally it’s known as the Jurassic Coast.

No T-Rex hunting for us this day, way too cold. Hands much better employed stuck in the pockets avoiding frost bite. Is it really the longest day in a few hours…. As we eventually headed back to the warmth of the car we passed a bare chested Surfer marching briskly towards his inevitable frozen doom in the North Sea.

“You might need a few more layers on….”

“Probably. The secret is to not scream too loudly and look like you enjoying it.”

“I thought the secret was to surf somewhere way warmer”

“It is but then you don’t get to surf round Icebergs. Plus if it was warmer my wife would have me cutting the grass….”

Three…..

3…….

Stood on Saltburn Pier today and it was 3C. As the wind howled across the North Sea, I dread to think what the wind chill factor was. Apparently it’s still Spring here. Thermal T-shirt, thick jumper and a down jacket simply wasn’t enough. We were FROZEN. But then again as Basil Fawlty once said when told there was always someone worse off than yourself

“REALLY, I’d love to meet them as I could do with a b…..y laugh”

We weren’t those poor souls trying to SURF. We heard frequent bloody curdling screams as they entered the water and that wasn’t a monster JAWS shark causing that. I’m sure I saw an iceberg at one stage, or maybe that was a surfer who had spent more than a minute in those frigid waters. We passed one surfer sat in his car, with the heating full on, holding a steaming cup of something, who was uncontrollably shaking….

Yes good old Saltburn. An old Yorkshire coast childhood haunt of mine. Every year my so called school would do a sponsored beach walk from Redcar to Saltburn and back again. The teachers spent the child free day in the Hydro pub. Don’t tell them but quite a few of the pupils had curtailed the walk after 100 yards and were in the Dolphin Pub, a bit further down the beach. I usually made it to Saltburn as then I got to ride the little funicular up the cliff. Back then that was as near as this part of the world got to Disneyland.

Sadly last years Oscar nominated movie called Saltburn had nothing to do with this little coastal town. Shame that, it might have livened up the movie a lot. I would like to see them attempt a lot of the raunchy stuff they apparently got up to in that movie anywhere near Saltburn beach, in these temperatures. Maybe that surfer sat shaking in his car had tried to recreate some movie scenes and spectacularly failed….