The Pig Yard

We're never happier than when we take a holiday in Britain. There are certain criteria: it needs to be somewhere no more than a 4 hour drive from home; located close to the sea; within walking distance of a village (newspaper) shop and at a time of year when it isn't going to be too warm.

Our week away at Holly Cottage, Boggle Hole near to Robin Hood's Bay was almost perfect - you could only walk to the nearest shop when the tide was out. It was possible to walk along the cliff tops but this involved a considerable climb up and down at both ends of the journey. Jane of course did this walk first thing in the morning to collect the Times newspaper, mainly for the walk but also it was good to have something to read, do the crossword in the moments when we were just idling.

The cottage was just perfect and thanks to our TomTom SatNav we found it very easily and in time to meet the owners who had spent the morning cleaning it up ready for our stay.

Dave & Lucie who were staying for the weekend were parked just down the road and were with us in minutes.

After unpacking and familiarising ourselves with the layout of the cottage we set off down to see what Boggle hole had to offer and how far it was to walk to Robin Hood's Bay.

Unfortunately the tide was in and so we had to walk over the top of the cliff using part of the Cleveland way.

Looking up from the beach - this is Boggle hole. A small inlet with a stream running out into the sea. Nothing special and yet a fascinating area that we visited a number of times during our stay.

The Youth Hostel at the base must be a wonderful place to stay because it is so close to the sea.

Robin Hood's Bay on Bank Holiday Monday and it was like going back in time 50 years.

Donkeys on the beach, children playing on the sand and dipping in the rock pools looking for small crabs and anything else the tide may have left behind.

As always Jane (in the background) was attracted to the donkeys and couldn't resist giving them a stroke.

The town (RHB) is perched on the edge of steep cliffs and is a delightful sight as you walk along the beach. We did this walk on a number of occasions and we were lucky that the tide was always in our favour throughout the week.

Every day we experienced superb weather, sometimes a little breezy but then again this is the North Yorkshire coastline and we were expecting a lot worse.

It was inevitable that we would visit Whitby because it had been a long time since our last visit and also it had a supermarket, the closest for 30 miles.

We took photographs of Whitby Abbey 30 years ago when it was possible just to walk around it freely. Now it is managed by English Heritage and there is a fee to go in. Needless to say we wandered around outside the wall and made the most of the vantage points we found.

Just by chance whilst walking around Whitby we saw a large number of people gathered on a road bridge all looking along the North York Moors railway line waiting for "something". So Jane approached one of the on-lookers and discovered they were waiting for a steam train. We had inadvertently become train spotters.

After what seemed a long wait a Mallard class engine came into sight, travelling backwards, pulling a full load of carriages. It turned out to be the Sir Nigel Gresley. This is where Steve becomes very sad in the geeky sense of the word because he knew that Sir Nigel Gresley was the name of this engines designer. He knows this because his brother, Clive, had a Hornby 00 train set when he was a very young child and the engine was a blue Sir Nigel Gresley. This train is a classic and we had the privilege to be there when it was in Whitby station.

Whitby is a fascinating sea port with quaint terraced cottages, a ruined abbey and of course its harbour.

It is also the setting for Bram Stokers vampire novel -Dracula.

The town is also famous for jet jewellery and there are many shops in the town selling beautiful jet items.

Enough of the tourist information...

The upper reaches of the harbour now have some new townhouses along the shore.

It might be great to live in one of these but the town is quite limited in what it has to offer. The only supermarket is a co-op, no Tesco, Sainsbury or Asda, and the cultural elements are based on the history of the town.

The harbour is fascinating with two jetties forming  protection as ships sail into the harbour.

Each promontory has a lighthouse on it to guide vessels safely between them.

We walked out to the very end and even though the sun was warm the wind off the sea was chilling.

The sight of a steam bus has got to be unique. "Old Glory" was doing bus rides around the town and was surprisingly quick. We started to wonder that maybe steam buses had potential until we saw the two bus drivers who were both covered in coal dust and soot.

Just imagine this on a large scale and it would be labour intensive and very dirty.

As mentioned before the weather was truly unbelievable and to match the blue skies we had yellow gorse bushes.

We've never noticed before how gorse smells of coconut.

Steve loves his toasted tea cake and so every walk has to be arranged around a tea room.

If he didn't get his tea cake he substituted it with carrot cake.

Simple pleasures...

Walking the Cleveland way should be safe enough with little opportunity for getting lost. Just keep the sea on your right until you come to the point when you head off inland to return to your starting point.

On this walk we managed to go a little further than intended but we look happy enough here.

We walked from Robin Hood's Bay as far as Whitby lighthouse and then followed footpaths to return along an old railway line to RHB.

Along the way we stopped for a picnic lunch on a commemorative bench that was on the cliff top just at the right moment.

Jane spent a lot of the week with her eye to the camcorder.

Pictures tell part of the story but video says that little bit more.

Towards the end of the week John and Susie our old college friends joined us.

They are great walkers and so we set off for a walk from Ravenscar south towards Hayburn Wyke.

Holly Cottage was a haven for wild life. not only did we have a mass of birds visiting the feeders in the back garden there was also the odd Roe Deer in the field opposite and because it was so remote there was little disturbance.

The owner of the cottage also said there frequent visits by badgers in the back garden so Jane put down sultanas all week but we were unlucky and didn't see a badger.

The cottage was advertised as accommodating 8 people and although there were enough beds the living room would never seat 8 people, not even 8 small people.

Thankfully there were only ever 4 of us, at most, so there was plenty of room on the main settees for us all.

In the evenings we sat and watched TV, Jane did a jigsaw and I read.

We didn't cook too many times at home. One evening we visited the Flask Inn which was nothing special. Another evening we went to Fylingdale Inn located in Fylingthorpe. This was a good find with excellent food at reasonable prices.