Fog over the moors

North Yorkshire Coast

Well, overcast to be exact. In any case, sufficiently cloudy and grey to set the mood for a meditative meander along coastal N. Yorkshire.

Let’s begin in Helmsley, still inland, about a 45-minute drive north of York. There was no particular reason to visit this town, except that it was halfway between York and our coastal destination for the next day’s interview, and it had a youth hostel. One thing about Helmsley is the color of the buildings. Whether brick, block or stone, they all seem to be a lighter shade of grey. You can have your strip malls, drab office parks, and soulless apartment blocks in Reading or Slough, but out here in North Yorkshire- zoning laws, baby. (*author’s note- that’s unfair as I’ve never been to Reading or Slough- but after hearing about both places in The Office, I have to imagine the worst.)

I could have featured a snapshot of downtown, but suffice to say, the square in Helmsley is picture-postcard perfect and full of tourists. Highly recommended for a pot roast and Yorkshire pudding meal in one of the many quaint restaurants. Speaking of quaint, here’s a neat neighborhood scene:

a stream instead of a back alley, and look- no garbage, graffiti or discarded refrigerators. England remains first-world, out in the country at least. I like to imagine that the smooth-walled building on the right is actually older than the stone-walled building on the left. That’s not modern block, it’s opus caementicium, long-lasting Roman concrete!

And here is our hostel dorm room:

Seniority got me the single bed.

and the dining room:

Of course muscle-bound Lukas, my tech-assistant first class and bodyguard, had to do a few pull ups from the beams. “Stop that, Luke! You’re gonna bring the ceiling down with you!”

They offered a classic English breakfast for ten pounds but the regular, simple buffet was included in the stay, plus I didn’t want to spoil (and fatten) tech man 2nd class Andy with another extravagant, sausage and bacon, eggs and beans, mushrooms and grilled tomato, bread and butter calorie-bomb plate like we’d had in York. As for Lukas, he doesn’t get fat, just runs a couple afternoon marathons in combat boots with infantry pack to burn it all off.

Between the inland farmland and the coast, we’d have to pass through the moor.

from The Secret Garden: Mary felt as if the drive would never come to an end and that the wide, bleak moor was a wide expanse of black ocean through which she was passing on a strip of dry land.

Sounds eerie and romantic, but we passed through on a sunny day. This is a pic provided by the hostel, but the sky and countryside looked exactly like this:

I have no idea what those are- hood ornament stabilizers?

Everybody said, “Too bad you weren’t here a couple weeks ago to see the blooming heather!” That’s a translation of Yorkshire into understandable American. What they actually said was, ‘as tha’ missed th’ bloomin’ ether? Ee by gum!

In classic English fashion, the clouds took over when we reached the coast. It was chilly and we had some prep to do for the interview ten miles down the road at Ravenscar, so rather than explore around town we took refuge in the library.

Lukas and Andy looking at the ruins of Whitby Abbey, over the wharf.

After seeing the picture below on Wikipedia, I wish I had splurged and found a hotel in the area, so that we could have explored around town a little. Whitby Abbey is a national heritage Class 1 site and chock full of history.

Hey, I like smart phones and cars and Japanese hot-jet, bum-spraying toilets too, but look at this ancient church. If they had the brains and the means and the will to build structures of this level of beauty (and this is only the ruins!), what else did they have that might suggest to us moderns that perhaps the Middle Ages weren’t so dark?

Of course life then was hard, and I’ll take my conveniences and hard-fought liberties secured by my ancestors, but are we positive that life’s better today? If they had places like this, I’ll bet they had other nice things and at minimum their medical system, without the vaccines and the prescription opioids and rule by Phizer, was at least as conducive to good health as ours (pre-bloodletting era at least). Why, they may have even had advanced surgery. Life may have been good in Ye Olde Times!

Whitby Abbey

Saint Ælfflæd (654–714) was the daughter of King Oswiu of Northumbria and Eanflæd. She was abbess of Whitby Abbey, an abbey of nuns that were known for their skills in medicine, from the death of her kinswoman Hilda in 680, first jointly with her mother, then alone. Ælfflæd was particularly known for her skills in surgery and her personal attention to patients, as was Hilda, who was known for her personalized medical care

(“Personalized medical care”?? Heck, I’ll take Ælfflæd and Hilda over United Health Care any day.)

At the time of the Abbess Ælfflæd, the abbey was a double-monastery of monks and nuns, (sans hanky panky we wish to presume). Actually, it was a different structure then. The old Abby was sacked by the Danes, of course. It was left in ruins for almost 200 years until the Normans arrived and Reinfrid, a soldier of William the Conqueror’s army who became a monk, reopened the monastery in a new building. That was mostly removed and in the 1220s the abbey was rebuilt on a larger scale. So the original abbey was built in 657 but the modern one above is a mere 800 years old.

If I get back to England, I’m paying another visit to North Yorkshire and Whitby Abbey. I want to walk the grounds and imagine the Vikings coming in on their longboats. I’m an Anglo-Saxon farmer named Cuthbert or Rædwulf or something, fighting valiantly to save the town and its fair maidens from the savage Norse, but alas, they’ve taken me prisoner and at dawn it’s the blood eagle for me (which I’ll not describe here lest you lose your lunch).

Or it’s the 16th century and Henry VIII’s army has crossed the moor and is advancing. I’m rector of the monastery and I’ll fight like Cuthbert ages before me, defending the church, but they’ll defeat our ragtag group of monarchist defenders and the monks will be tossed over the cliff, the nuns deflowered, the Abbey pillaged and burned and Cromwell will have me put to the rack.

Or it’s the 19th century and I’m a raven perched on a spire of the old ruins, and count Dracula has taken the form of a large dog, and is scurrying up the 199 steps to the graveyard of St. Mary’s church, looming in the moon shadow of the Abbey.

Or it’s the early 20th century and I’m an old, grizzled shepherd looking out to sea from the high cliffs, bundled up in December, taking a puff on my pipe and squinting to get a better look at the Von der Tann and the Derfflinger, lobbing shells at and over the Abbey as they attempt to destroy the coastguard station at the end of the headland.

That’s all part of the history of Whitby Abbey. You see what I mean about Ye Olde Times? Life was fun!

Back to modern day:

Despite the happy, playful artwork at the library, the town did have a bit of a dreary, heavy feeling. Maybe there’s a reason Bram Stoker chose this setting for his novel.

An overweight teen wearing headphones sat down at the study carrel near our table. He was banging away at the library-provided computer, and singing some punk rock tune with off-color lyrics, fairly loudly. The librarian didn’t bother to correct him so we packed up our stuff and headed for Ravenscar.

Nearby the spot we parked the car, I noticed this monochrome UK flag.

I asked a local lady walking by “What’s with the black and white Union Jack? Do you know what it means?”

She didn’t.

I ventured that it could be for mourning the loss of some important person, or recognition of some sort of disaster, like our Old Glory at half mast.

“Could be,” she said, “or something sinister too.”

Her husband then deadpanned, “This is Whitby, after all.”

We drove the windy road through the fields to Ravenscar and had a nice visit and interview with Professor Exley, Mr. Aluminum (-ium for you Anglophiles). I told him we’d probably spend the night in Scarborough, but he said, “Oh no, you’ve got to stay in Whitby! Much better. And be sure to see Robin Hood’s Bay on the way back!”

So we retraced our route and then took the side route out to Robin Hood’s Bay. If there ever was a picturesque little coastal English town, this is it! Of course there was a beautiful hotel named the Victorian right across from the car park, and Lukas kept looking at it, then finally said, “Why don’t we stay here?”

I wanted to ask, “Luke, when you’re in New York, do you just say, ‘Why don’t we stay at the Plaza or the Waldorf Astoria?’”

Whether Luke knows either of those hotels, he’d get the gist of my question and his answer would be, “Sure, why not?”

Youth, oh spirited, care-free youth.

I led the boys on a walk down the steep and winding main street in Robin Hood’s Bay. The street ended at water’s edge, where the high-tide surf surged up and down the final 20 yards of concrete and rock. Each alley off the main street was a venture into narrow passageways and little cottages with seaside-themed decorations and art inside and out. Like downtown York, it felt like something Disney would want to recreate- but hey, you get this feeling all over England!

The town was utterly charming, but I wondered about living here. It was already fall and getting cold and pretty empty, but I imagined the summer throngs and not getting any peace and quiet for 6 months of the year.

Thank goodness we found this place. It was starting to get dark and when I reached into my leather camera satchel I realized I had run out of my Ektachrome E100 for low lighting.

Early evening street scene, Robin Hood’s Bay. f/5.6 at 1/250s on my Minolta SR-T101 with Echtacrome E100.

Luke and Andy slipped into an alley and I lost them for a while. So I inquired at the little hotel/restaurant at the end of the road where the surf was sloshing in and out. It was over 200 quid so we tarried a while longer, exploring more side alleys, and then hiked back up to the car. On the way we met a family on holiday up from West Yorkshire and had a nice chat. I’ve met a few surly Englishmen, but it’s almost always the loner types. Whenever I run into a family, it’s all camp-brotherhood between brits and yanks.

Before heading back to Whitby we decided to try our luck at the youth hostel, just a mile or two down the coast. You could only get down to the sea-level, gem of a hostel via walking path through a thick forest. We would have loved to stay here but there was a big group of jr. high kids and it was full.

They were all happy, nice looking kids, but you wouldn’t have known they were ‘English’ without hearing them speak. The teachers were legacy English, but the kids were all Asian, as they say here (not east Asian).

Back in Whitby we had a bit of a money problem. The ‘system’ was down and wherever we went it seemed they were only taking cash. Now this is normally fine and dandy by me. I’m trying to get people to pay cash to prevent the coming tyranny under the panopticon, technocratic Borg system. But I already mentioned how much they skin the hapless tourist who chooses to withdraw cash from the ATM with exorbitant fees and terrible exchange rates, and I’d decided I’d lost that battle and gave in and was now paying with my card. I wasn’t about to pay the fees for the ATM and I told the owner of the Thai restaurant my dilemma. I said the only cash I have is in dollars. He was an extremely friendly Indian man and said “No worries. We will accept your dollars.” And he gave me a fair exchange rate. And a free shot of brandy for all of us after dinner! I’ll be going back to that place when I revisit Whitby.

Well, we couldn’t find a reasonably-priced hotel in tourist-town Whitby either, so I popped into a pub, got online and found an apartment in Scarborough about 45 minutes down the dark, winding highway.

Yes, that Scarborough, with the fair and all. I’ll tell a little about that in my next England post.

photo credits:

Helmsley Youth Hostel photos (kitchen, bedroom, fine old car on moors) thank you YHA GB!

Stream in Helmsley: The copyright on this image is owned by David Robinson and is licensed for reuse under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 license.

Kodak products sign: Photo by Andy Kennedy on Unsplash

Robin Hood’s Bay street scene with snowy hills: Photo by Tom Kulczycki on Unsplash (I was kidding about having taken the photo myself with the Minolta- I just had a little nostalgia for the way they used to describe photos in glossy photography magazines with all the specs. And you can see the snow on the hills in the background- it’s not late summer but winter)

Chris Kirk - Whitby Abbey 1

· CC BY 2.0

Painting: The bombardment of Whitby, by William Scott Hodgson. 16 December, 1914.

thumbnail: Fog in England country scene: Photo by Ali Gooya on Unsplash