We love being in North Yorkshire — An Elegant Sufficiency

It was a no brainer decision to break our journey home here in Harome, one of our favourite places to be. We didn’t want to simply “pass through”, so allowed ourselves a day to just enjoy being in North Yorkshire.

My Hero had consulted the weather forecast, which appeared to be fairly promising, so we got out the map and decided to head for Pickering and Kirbymoorside and then up onto the moors, from where we’d have several choices open to us about which way to come back.

Pickering proved a non-starter - or should I say a non-stopper - because of a long traffic jam and it being market day. We carried on to Thornton le Dale but once again, saw the large numbers of people mooching around and decided we didn’t want to be amongst them. A quick U turn and we were heading for the moors.

What a great decision! The air was clear and there was s-p-a-c-e aplenty!

We parked in the Hole of Horcum car park and I decided to jump out and take some photos from the path across the road. No sooner had I opened the door than - brrrrr! There was a stiff wind and it was chilly! I grabbed my hoodie from the bag in the back and risked life and limb crossing the road to get a better view.

Wonderful! The places around here are those of my school trips, their names reminscent of Geography field visits and summer jollys. Did we ever appreciate how lucky we were then? I very much doubt it. On a morning like this, though, in spite of the chill wind, there can be few better places to be.

Why did we even consider mooching around a tourist honeypot when all of this lay just a few miles beyond?

The clouds were moving quickly and the sunshine soon came and went again. As we drove over Fylingdales, where there is an RAF Early Warning Station my memory is of three huge structures resembling golf balls so it came a surprise to see them replaced by this ?toaster? It was - and still is - quite a landmark.

A little further on, we stopped in an open spot amongst heather moorland. Whilst in Scotland, I had joked about people of our parents’ generation who would stick a spring of heather in the radiator grille of their car. Why? Maybe it was thought to be lucky or perhaps it was a way of quietly boasting that they’d been to Scotland? Perhaps we should do the same? Of course, I wasn’t being serious - just as well perhaps, for we saw hardly any heather in Scotland, probably because we weren’t in the right area for that. However, here we were with rather more opportunity! (No, we didn’t ;-) )

There were some lovely thistles here too; Yorkshire thistles though.

From time to time, we’d pass by one of the locals but most of them were more interested in eating than anyone passing by.

The views from up here are spectacular and there was real excitement in my Hero’s voice as he announced that he could see the sea!

Actually, we weren’t too far from Whitby by now though had already decided that we didn’t really go that far on this road and instead, turned left in Staithes.

Several of the villages and small towns around here are popular because of the railway; either the North York Moors steam railway or the Esk Valley line and had we been more sure of how we wanted to spend today, we might have built in a ride, perhaps. Instead, we criss crossed the line in several places but somehow managed to avoid seeing an actual train in any of them.

We took a break in Danby, at the North York Moors Centre where the Whitby fish cakes and the sausage roll kept us going till later. By now, it was even warm enough to take my hoodie off!

Coming back over the moor again, via Rosedale, a couple of fast motorbikes overtook us at great speed, their riders opening up and doing whatever the motor bike equivalent of putting their foot down is.

The locals didn’t seem that interested.

As we reached the summit, the sky had darkened again and was looking quite threatening.

From up here, there was a fine view. My hero likened it to one of those places where one can see many counties - or states - but this being Yorkshire, well, we could see about half of it!