Tapp's Travels

Well, this is novel!  No ferries to miss.  No Google translate.  No funny money!  But no cheap coffees either!  … and lots of traffic and crowded supermarkets.

The caravan is mended and all appears to be working.  However, two days before we leave, I had a major tooth extraction.  “Take it easy for a few days.  No major exertion.  Keep taking the tablets!”  Yeah, right Mr Dentist.  We have a caravan to get on the road!  Glenda’s watch needed a new battery and my walking shoes fell to bits.  So, a quick trip to Timsons – two birds with one stone!

The day before departure, Glenda’s glasses broke.  We needed new pads fitted.  A quick troll round the local opticians proved that her glasses could only be fixed by a specialist with the right tools!  Newton Abbot was the nearest place.  So arrangements made to take them in on the way north!  Where will I park a caravan while this repair occurs?

Bookers carpark was the answer!

The trip to Park Farm was uneventful in a wet and miserable sort of way.  So much spray that not only could we not see where we were going, we couldn’t see where we had come from.  Still, by the time we got to Strensham services, the rain stopped and the sun came out.

Park Farm was a lovely small site with 180 degree, panoramic views.

There were five of us lined up at the top of the slope …

Four caravans facing the view… and a campervan facing the wall!  Some people don’t seem to get the message!

Although just ten minutes from the motorway, it was so peaceful – until, that is, I managed to blow up Glenda’s hair drier while drying a pillow case (best not to ask!).  So a quick trip to Boots in Derby (to the same shopping centre we had visited an hour earlier for fuel) was required!  We bought their entire stock of travel hair driers – all one of them.  Later we discovered that the original item had re-set itself and continues to work perfectly.  Still, Glenda now has a spare!  I clearly don’t have a need for one apart from using it as a static “tumble-drier” (a procedure now banned by management)!

The Cowshed, half a mile walk down the lane, serves a superb breakfast.  And for a rural eatery, it seems to have a very large and loyal customer base.  Cars were parked up and down the lane as well as filling their two carparks.

We could have stayed longer, but we had to get to Scarborough.   While the trip from Devon had been in a swirling mist of rain and spray, the second sector was spent wobbling up the exciting M1, M18, A1M and the A64 in strong cross-winds while battling with enormous numbers of HGVs.  Why do we do this?!

Sawdon Heights (and there’s a clue in the name) is located high up on the south edge of the North Yorks Moors.  Up a pretty but challenging four mile “single track road with passing places”.  Luckily for us, the three passing spaces were located at exactly the right places.  Just where we met three terrified locals coming down the lane!  One at each spot!  I told Glenda that I’d pre-arranged the timing ahead of time.  But, as that’s what I always say, I don’t think she believed me!

The reward was a superb pitch with a view out over the Vale of Pickering

From here we attended the memorial service at Scalby for the father of a very good friend from Brixham.  This was the original reason for our trip north.  Although it was a sad day, the sun shone and we remembered the good old times.  It was also good to see all of Sue and Ed’s family together.  And good to see them smiling again.  David would have been proud of them all.

We have never visited Scarborough before (if you discount one day I spent watching motor cycling racing at Oliver’s Mount about 50 years ago on a day when it was too rough to go to sea from Whitby).   This time we walked along the cliff top at South Bay.  It’s a very grand seaside resort of yester-year.  Huge numbers of hotels, boarding houses and B and Bs many being converted to rather swish apartments overlooking the sea.

However, we decided that the town was best viewed from the clifftop.  The closer we got to the epicentre, the more crowded and “kiss-me-quick” it became.

But there was an M&S Simply Food in town.  Enough said!

Talking of food, and I’m not going to say much about this, we discovered that everything in the freezer was defrosting!  @#%@×&^£#.

So, just like in Spain, the fridge had to go back on gas!  After several “rather tense” conversations with our service agent back at home and several tests, it transpires that the fridge “thinks” that the computer-controlled gas valve at the back of the fridge is open and so won’t allow the thing to work on electricity.  However, after working on gas for a bit, then switching back to electricity the fridge bursts back into life.  Mutter, mutter, mutter!  Another new master board required when we get home!

Anyway.

From our campsite the road continues a mile or so into Wykeham forest.  There is then a sign saying “unsuitable for motor vehicles”.  Well, that’s a challenge!  The woodland is in fact criss-crossed with unsuitable roads, only one of which actually emerges onto a tarmac road.  A road of sorts.  Just wide enough for one car, grass down the middle, steeply sloping down the hill with NO passing spaces for about 10 miles (well, perhaps just over half a mile, but it would have been a real pain to meet anything bigger than an electric scooter!).  This took us to Hackness Grange for coffee.  Except during Covid the hotel had closed to the public.  It’s now just a wedding venue for everyone’s convenience!

From here it was a quick cross country trip to Ravenscar Tearooms for our morning drink.  They are open every day …

… except Tuesday.  And what day is it today?….   And they need to be told about the correct use of apostrophes!  In the end, the National Trust came to the rescue with a rather good coffee and cake!

There’s a massive seal colony on the rocky ledges below Ravenscar.  But we declined the invitation to walk down a rather inviting cycle path to get a closer view.  This was, in part (actually, almost exclusively) because it would involve a climb of some 600 feet later on!  And anyway, closer views are what binoculars are for!  But the view down the hill and across Robin Head’s Bay was spectacular…

… in fact, it transpired that this was the best place from which to view the Bay.

On one building we saw this plaque…

… my kind of village!

After a walk along the cliff-top southwards from Ravenscar, we drove to Robin Hood’s Bay.  Two miles as the crow flies but about 12 by car.  The road down to village was closed.  Very limited parking.  Missed the discounted fish and chips at the Grosvenor Hotel by 10 minutes.  The dining room of the Victoria Hotel was closed for a private function.  We left!

Whitby was a place I had visited many times.

Four times a year we chartered the MFV Achieve out of the port while working offshore surveying the effects of industrial discharges on the local marine environment.  OK, so it was best part of 50 years ago, but it was a lot more peaceful in those days.  Far fewer tourists and certainly fewer “tourist tatt” shops and amusement arcades.  But probably about the same number of icecream vendors along the harbour front.

During one particularly windy (so no work at sea) day, the challenge was made to walk from the swing bridge to the end of the pier, eating one icecream at each available outlet.  The only time you could stop walking was to buy the next cone!   The story goes that only one person ever completed the challenge.  As I recall there were 13 places to buy icecream!  And three of them were in successive shops!  That bit was a little tricky!  In 2022 I declined to repeat the event – in fact didn’t buy even one!

We tackled the “unsuitable” road again the next day with the intention of visiting Dalby Forest, a few miles to the west of base.  As with all good expeditions we set off towards the east before veering sort of north and eventually west.  Several hours later we came across a “village shop”.  Well, strictly speaking a table outside someone’s house with a collection of goodies and an honesty box.  We came away with a cake, a jar of marmalade and a box of eggs.  We’ll be OK for supplies if we get lost in the forest!

In the event, it turned out that the road through the forest was a toll road.  They wanted us to part with £10 for the privilege of driving on what looked a lot less “unsuitable” road than the forest tracks we had driven on to get there.  So we didn’t!  We went back to our local forest for a lovely (and free) walk!

… with banks of “wild” daffodils…

And on that note I think I’ll stop although we do have one more day before we leave Sawdon.