An English Weekend Away.
It is not so long since I thought only ‘old’ people went to Whitby. But then anyone over twenty-five was old! Now I am in my thirties I have surpassed the ‘old’ benchmark and have earned my passage to the East coast.
Infact, I was really looking forward to it. A few days in our motorhome would be a lovely break (hmmm, maybe I’ll buy a West Highland terrier, put him in a plaid jacket, start wearing purple and moaning about busy main roads and people who drive over 40mph!) I’m only thirty-four but I have to be honest I was quite excited.
We arrived at our campsite a short walk from Robin Hoods Bay (Great site with fab facilities) and set up our outdoor furniture, it was a bit chilly and grey to be honest but we had decided to do a barbeque, and do a barbeque we would! Opening our beers and watching people to and fro from their caravans with their water carriers to the tap we thanked our lucky stars we had a 100litre tank lurking under our dinette.
‘Phew it’s hard work this camping’ my husband sighed as he relaxed in his chair drinking his beer and watching the burgers fizz on the hot coals.
‘Hmmm, yep, certainly is’ I agreed.
The following day it rained, a lot. We didn’t care. We even managed a walk along the beach, staring into the rock pools for orange and brown shells. We even found a fossil!
Escaping the weather we sat in the pub http://www.robin-hoods-bay.co.uk/html/eating_out/bay_hotel.htm It was great watching the grey sea rush onto the beach with a glass of white wine and a seafood platter.
The following day dawned bright and sunny and we decided to venture into Whitby. It was the start of the Bank Holiday and when we booked the site we were told there wasn’t any space for us. Now, in a motorhome you will never really be homeless but without a campsite you can feel a bit ‘anchor-less’. Usually once you are present on a campsite they can find it hard to tell you to ‘get on yer bike’ so it’s worth asking (or begging, pleading, throwing yourself on their mercy) for a pitch. We were lucky (or not so) as we found out later.
‘Yes, we can squeeze you in’ said the man at Middlewood campsite www.middlewoodfarm.com
Great! We set off to Whitby knowing we had a nice plot to return to that evening. We bought fresh seafood, prawns, crab, mackerel and mussels for lunch and a lot of white wine. After trudging up the steps to the ancient Abbey and carrying our supplies back to our chariot we were shattered so we set off to our little bit of peace and tranquillity back at the campsite.
We parked up in the relatively empty farmer’s field along with a small transit-type camper and a little pop up VW that looked like it was born around the same time as the first episode of the A-Team. Everything was quiet, still, the kettles were a-whispering, the cows were a-mooing (mmmm) and everyone was lazily lighting barbeques and reading the Times. Then, all of a sudden out of no-where. There was the invasion of ‘The Tent People!’ I can’t remember being so scared since I was seven watching ‘The Triffids’ for the first time. There wasn’t just one little Peugeot 106 crammed to the roof with canvas but at least thirty of them. They were queuing and vying for the best spot, openly pushing and shoving their fellow campers. As more began flooding through the gates chewing up the field a trailer tent arrived. The driver obviously regarded himself as more superior to the Tentonians because he kept revving his Jeep’s engine and reversing wildly across the field.
It didn’t take long for the campsite wardens to take control and they packed the canvas village in nice and tight, so tight infact, if you were sat on your ‘porta-potti’ in one tent you could easily reach out and pinch a sausage off next doors barbeque. Nice trick.
We had so much fun watching the Tentonians erect their brightly coloured palaces, some were very efficient, some not so good, but one young couple were really struggling. It took a fellow camper to pour salve on the situation by taking down their wrinkly, bunched up accommodation and re-build it to standard, thus avoiding a full blown public domestic.
So for now, the moral of this story is don’t hassle yourself with putting up leaky damp spider infested tents, hire yourself a lovely all-singing, all-dancing, motorhome and ALWAYS make sure you don’t get stuffed in a tent field as last resort in it!
And remember Whitby is great and it isn’t just for ‘old’ people!
