Coastal Tours

Spent a lovely day today driving up the North Yorkshire coast. I am amazed just how wonderful the beaches are up here ... just a shame the North Sea is so damn cold!!

Beautiful weather again today although a little chilly when sat in the shade. Our first stop was Runswick Bay. At first we thought the car park was at the top of the cliff (a very high cliff!) ... but a short walk down the path we saw there was another car park down below so turned around and drove down.

The beach was gorgeous - something for all ages whether you want to build sand castles or go clambering over the rocks. Callum also discovered seaweed and for a moment we thought we would have to bring some back with us!! He was dragging it around the beach like a puppy.

Next port of call was the old fishing village of Staithes. This time we did have to park the car at the top of the cliff and a short walk brought us into the village. It's narrow windy streets with the narrowest of alleys branching off brings an eclectic charm, but for any modern day person, you'd have to be car-less as there is hardly any parking down the hill. We had lunch on the harbour at the Cod and Lobster before bracing ourselves for the short, but steep walk back to the car.

Heading northwards up the coast (and now in desperate need of a bank - very few places take cards!!), we ended up at Saltburn. We've driven through it on numerous occasions when visiting Jon's Granda in Easington but never stopped before. Saltburn Pier makes frequent appearances on Heartbeat! We found the most fantastic coffee shop that has the widest range of milk shakes you could imagine (and were very clued up on what was gluten free - Ollie would had been in his element - it's not often you stumble across this.)

Oh and if anyone can fill us in on why there are 6 mini-portraits of Brian Blessed painted on the sea-front wall, we love to know!

We needed to kill some time before tea, so drove home the long way 'round via Guisborough. We were too late to get close up to the ruined Abbey, so had to be content peering over the church walls. It would also appear that the map we are using has roads on that are non-existent. We headed home and ended up in a farm yard (no through road) and had to backtrack! Oops!

Found a lovely pub though for tea in Ainthorpe (nr Danby) - The Fox and Hounds. Very generous portions and the beef Jon had was so tender it kept falling off the fork!

Got back to the farm and discovered we weren't the only tenants in the cottage - we have a very friendly field mouse!! I went to grab a glass of wine and saw two little eyes staring at me from behind the bottle. Well, we are very rural and it is more his home than ours!!