I’ve just returned from a lovely week away with the family in the charming North Yorkshire coastal village of Robin Hood’s Bay.
As a family holiday it was full of beach-combing for fossils, exploring rock pools and hunting for the mythical boggle of Boggley Hole. If you visit that part of the world, try out the Youth Hostel’s excellent cakes.
As a destination for a writer it was also soaked in history, both real and fantastical, as well as the full panoply of weather conditions to stir the imagination.
Plunging waves crashed into centuries-old stone walls, before the tide fled and left vast, rocky shallows and sandbars to explore. It was all made even more engaging by the creepy arrival of what the locals call sea fret; a sea fog which drifted in and turned a sunny morning into a hazy lunchtime.
Robin Hood’s Bay itself is a steep stack of stone cottages tumbling down a steep hill towards a broad, shallow beach. The cottages are piled up one on top of the other, an arrangement which local lore says enabled smugglers to move illicit goods from shore to inland by moving them between houses via interlinked basements, attics, bedrooms and concealed cupboards.
A few ideas landed in my head, some of which may one day make it onto a page!