[2021]
10:00 G— B— [cancelled]
P— B—
12:00 Raincliffe Hotel, Scarborough
I’d packed the Samsung computer and peripherals in the rucksack, but I remembered that I ought to print the booking confirmation from the North Yorkshire Moors Railway; so I set them up again. It drove me crazy when initially the computer went so slow. Anyway, I eventually was able to open the e-mail and print it (07:31).… Packed my personal stuff in my rucksack, the over-spill going into one of the main luggage-items.… Replenished the bird feeders including the peanut dispenser, and brushed out and refilled the bird bath. I’d been worried about the possibility of not having enough time, but I got finished before 9.30am.
P— B— arrived ca.9.50am; we got all the luggage aboard, and ourselves, and set off. Conversation didn’t lapse en route, thanks to him and
Janet, much less so to me. Some stories were repeats of last time’s. G— had phoned him yesterday, as he had phoned us, from his vehicle. Apparently, all the warning lights had come on, so although it could be driven one couldn’t be sure it wouldn’t break down. Our route took us along the noisy-surfaced A180 as far as Elsham Top, where we turned right along the A15 and over the Humber Bridge. Because he had a Humber Bridge “tag”, we didn’t join the fairly lengthy queue to the toll booth, but sped through the relatively traffic-free “tag” lane. Thence, northwards along the A164. As Skidby windmill went past on the left, we recalled toad-in-the-hole with giant Yorkshire puddings cooked in loaf-tins. (This, in fact, was at the
Half Moon pub in Skidby. I’d been there, I think, as a Hull University student in the first year when I was in halls of residence at Cottingham. But it was
Janet’s sister Susan, with whom we stayed at the Caretaker’s Lodge at Cottingham High School, who introduced us to the Yorkshire puddings. We walked there from Cottingham.) Just south of Beverley, at an “almost-cloverleaf” junction, we turned north-westwards along the A1079, which curved northwards skirting around Beverley; then at a roundabout, we continued more or less in the same direction along the B1248. This merged with the A614 just south of Bainton, and we went along this till we turned left into a “B” road. I wrote “Langtoft”; so, on looking at the Ordnance Survey map, I conclude that the turning was just north of Driffield and that the road was the B1249, heading northwards (and passing through Langtoft) as far as the A64. We turned right into the A64, which went eastwards for half a mile or so before curving northwards; and this brought us to Scarborough.
Janet had arranged with Vicky the proprietor that we’d be arriving at midday, rather than the published check-in time of 3pm. It was perhaps about 11.50am when we did arrive.
Janet recalls, “It had just rained.” Vicky sat us in the lounge, with easy chairs, settee, a bar and a pool table, for a few minutes, before leading us upstairs to the
first-floor[i] Room 5.[ii] (There were also rooms on the second
floor.)[iii] She carried some of the luggage for us. She offered to carry the large, heavy suitcase, but I insisted on doing that. My first impression was that the stair-carpet was slightly dingy (“Oh no!” I thought. “Is this going to be like the Westminster Hotel in
Rhyl?”);[iv] but the room could have been painted and decorated yesterday, were it not for the lack of odour of such. The bathroom was spotlessly sparkling-clean — and very neatly finished. (Sometimes sealant around showers and sinks in hotels is not neatly done, but here it
was.) Janet commented on a later day that the wallpaper in the bedroom was of an expensive kind. This room was larger than ours at home, but much of the space was taken up by the massive four-poster bed. There were ceramic elephant stands or tables each side of the bed. There was a tall chest with a mixture of full-width and half-width drawers near the bathroom (a “shower room”, in fact), and a dressing table on the far side of the bed, all in similar old, dark wood to the bed’s. There was no wardrobe, but there was a rail from which to hang clothes. There were a kettle and supplies of tea, coffee,
etc., on top of the chest of drawers. Janet likes to have a safe in the room, but there was none here; however, she wrote that the room was “Fine. Reasonably spacious — and clean.” She did the unpacking. As for me, I set up the computers and peripherals on the dressing table. I forgot to mention: there was an armchair on the opposite side of the bed, between the entrance door and the bathroom, and
Janet used that for writing up her journal, etc., using the bed as a “table” at need. I needed a Wi-Fi password to get logged on, and I went out to ask Vicky, who told me it was in the “green book”. I hadn’t noticed a green book, but it was there next to the tea and coffee things: an A4 binder of information. Actually, it was so dark green that it looked almost black to my eyes. Anyway, I got logged on.…
- [i] British English: US second floor
[ii] Photos at Monday
6 September 2021.
[iii] British English: US third floor
[iv] Friday
6 September 2013 and following days. The carpets in the Westminster Hotel were not “dingy”, they were filthy.
“Then we headed off,” Janet wrote, “to get our bearings, a drink, and some lunch. It had started raining again.” “To get our bearings”, for me, meant to go to the bus stops outside the railway station, to locate the precise one for each of our planned bus trips. I’d downloaded and printed a map of Scarborough—
Detail from the downloaded map of Scarborough, with the position of “Raincliffe Hotel” added
—but it wasn’t obvious from it that there’d be a fairly direct route from the hotel to the station. So we crossed Valley Road, on which the hotel was situated, and zigzagged up Grosvenor Road and (unnamed on the map, above) Cambridge Terrace, to get to Ramshill Road, and thence across Valley Bridge. After I’d looked at the bus stops at the station, we went to the only hostelry I knew from a recent years’ visit: the nearby
Wetherspoon pub The Lord Rosebery. “It had started raining again,”
Janet wrote. “We headed for Wetherspoon’s.… Chock-a-[block]. No tables. So we headed for
Costa, where [John] had a coffee and I had a welcome Sprite.” We didn’t exactly “head for”
Costa; we just needed to find somewhere for a drink, and wandered down the shopping street Westborough till we came to it. I had my usual-in-the-UK
americano with an extra shot.
Map from North Yorkshire County Council, with the bold text added by me
© Crown Copyright and Database Rights (2021) Ordnance Survey 100017946
Receipt from Costa Coffee, printed “13:34”
“To get our bearings” and “a drink” had been covered; what about “some lunch”?
Janet continued: “Then — it had stopped raining — I suggested that we head for
The Cask pub, which we’d passed not far from the hotel.”
Map from North Yorkshire County Council, with the bold text added by me
© Crown Copyright and Database Rights (2021) Ordnance Survey 100017946
The signs outside the pub promised food, but as Janet went on to write, “No food until 5pm, but a ‘regular’ told us about
Costcutter where we could buy food, which we could eat in the pub.—
Map from North Yorkshire County Council, with the bold text added by me
© Crown Copyright and Database Rights (2021) Ordnance Survey 100017946
—So I bought two bananas and a loaf of seeded bread. Our lunch — [John] had some [of the] bread. We spent quite a while in there chatting to locals, obviously regulars, then left for Peasholm Park.” We thought we’d misheard the fellow’s directions, because we couldn’t see any shops as we proceeded south along Ramshill Road. But just past the church, there was a block with shops on it, and one of the first was a
Costcutter Express convenience store. At the pub, Janet had a glass of
Diet Pepsi and I a pint of Birra Moretti — rather dear at £4.90, I thought.
Receipt, printed “13:53”, insufficient time from the Costa receipt, printed “13:34”, so one is or both are showing the wrong time
That didn’t stop me from having a further half-pint when
Janet had a second Diet Pepsi.
Receipt, printed “14:26”
I’d have been happy to wait until evening before eating, but I hadn’t eaten any breakfast (I never do when I’m at home) and
Janet insisted that it wouldn’t be good for me if I didn’t eat something. My
Asus computer logged on automatically to The Cloud, the Wi-Fi provider there (14:19–14:43). I looked up “Oliver’s Mount” in
Google Maps, the bus stops at Scarborough station, and the validity of bus passes. One of the locals reckoned that bus passes could be used from 9am, and my researches confirmed this. In North East Lincolnshire it’s 9.30am.
“It was overcast and quite cool still,” Janet wrote. “We’d returned to the hotel and changed into more suitable coats.”
Janet changed out of the short denim jacket she’d been wearing into a longer, more substantial cyan raincoat. I changed out of a light, cream-coloured jacket, and put on a navy-blue zippered raincoat. We kept hearing the bangs of what sounded like gunfire, and it occurred to me that it might be the Naval Warfare event in Peasholm Park. On leaving the hotel, this time we investigated the maze of paths leading off Valley Road through a park, and indeed that proved to be an almost direct way up to the level of Valley Bridge (“Valley Bridge Parade” at that point). We invariably used it to get to the town centre after that.
Map from North Yorkshire County Council
© Crown Copyright and Database Rights (2021) Ordnance Survey 100017946
From there, it was a bit over a mile to Peasholm Park, along Northway and Columbus Ravine (a name I remember from the location, I think, of the boarding house in which we stayed, the second time we went on holiday to Scarborough, in
1962).[v]
- [v] Dating this “1962” is from my memory of going to a show in Scarborough featuring Lenny the Lion, and, topping the bill, Helen Shapiro; one of the songs she sang was
Walkin’ Back To Happiness, which hit the pop music charts on 28 Sep. 1961.
We found that the Naval Warfare event had finished, having started at 3 o’clock; so the bangs we heard were almost certainly from that.
Janet asked a member of staff about it, only to be told that this had been the last one of the season!
I was keen to revisit the island with the oriental-style pagoda. I’d have been there while I was on holiday (twice) with parents, grandparents and Steve; and I also visited when Chris, Peter and I stayed at Scarborough Camp in July
1965.[vi]
- [vi] Holiday in Scarborough — Day Six
Monday 30 August 2021 16:26:00
Peasholm Park, Scarborough: pagoda
Monday 30 August 2021 16:30:56
Peasholm Park, Scarborough: pagoda, cascade, and (right:) half-moon bridge
Monday 30 August 2021 16:38:42
Peasholm Park, Scarborough: one of the two lions guarding the half-moon bridge
Monday 30 August 2021 16:40:50
Peasholm Park, Scarborough: across the half-moon bridge
Monday 30 August 2021 16:42:42
Peasholm Park, Scarborough: pagoda and cascade
Monday 30 August 2021 16:44:14
Peasholm Park, Scarborough: model boats for the Naval Warfare events
Monday 30 August 2021 16:48:26
Peasholm Park, Scarborough: pagoda
Monday 30 August 2021 16:49:54
Peasholm Park, Scarborough: oriental-style pool and bridge
Monday 30 August 2021 16:53:06
Peasholm Park, Scarborough: back across the half-moon bridge
We went back the same way as we’d come, arriving at the hotel not long after 5.30pm.
Janet made a cup of Nescafé for me and a cup of decaffeinated for herself. Transferred nine photos from the camera’s
SD card to the WD Elements HDD (17:41). We went down for “evening meal” at 6pm, as arranged.
Janet wrote: “We had dinner at 6pm, along with a pleasant Geordie couple… Good food, beautifully cooked — and lots of it! No complaints there.” For breakfast, there would be a pebble with a room number written on it placed on each table, indicating where we were to sit; but for dinner, we could sit where we would. There were two sets of tables for four in the bay window: we sat at one to the right; and they sat at one to the left. I had stewing steak and potatoes, and there was a large quantity of other mixed vegetables to share.
Janet had salmon. She hadn’t wanted potatoes with it, so I ate hers as well. When the Geordie fellow asked for olive oil, I did the same, to help with the vegetables. There was mixed fresh fruit to follow. To drink, I had two pints of
Birra Moretti (the local premium-lager “staple”, seemingly!) and
Janet two Diet Coke or Coke Zero (hereafter just referred to as
Coke).
Back in the room, I checked e-mail accounts (20:03). There was a reply from
Chris… [Did this and that on the computer (to] 21:37). Janet wrote: “I had a shower, made us a coffee, then organised my bag,
etc., for tomorrow… and started this [journal]! I was in bed at ca.10pm and [John] followed not long after.”…
[Tuesday
31 August 2021]
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