exploring & escapades

Wild Yorkshire, moors and coast. Burnt orange, sand, the green of the coastal path. An old cottage, a zillion stars. The tide is gone and back again. Everything changes in hours, nothing changes at all. With our friends, here, in this beautiful, quiet place. 

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Day 1, Yorkshire Coast Trip

We left Cambridge late on a Friday after work to drive north to the Yorkshire Moors, where we had rented a simple, classic English seaside cottage to stay in with our friends for the weekend. This trip was not for aggressively exploring, but for spending time with friends. It was slow, casual. Unplanned. Some of us stopped at a random pub off the highway for food. We didn’t even arrive in Staithes until after 10:00pm. When we did, the sky was inky black and speckled with stars. The tide was out.

Saturday morning. I woke up and went for a run on the main country road, winding through greenspace and sky. When I returned, breakfast was being made, board games were being played. We took our time.

Staithes was warm and bright, lively with lifeboat festival traffic, but not too busy. Together, we made our way through town, up the steep hill to the edge of the Cleveland Way coastal path on its outskirts. The view was gorgeous, the tide still far away from the shore. Sand and orange-brown rooftops. Beach noises from below. We walked forty-five minutes along the sea from Staithes to Port Mulgrave, the next closest village to the south, where we sat at a cafe for casual drinks, lunch, and cake. It was an unorganized place, but one with a particular kind of remote, small town charm. I don’t know how long we were in that garden. No one kept track of time. We were sitting at picnic tables, warm, in the sun.

We walked home along the main country road and stopped at the store to stock up on wine and breakfast food. I napped. More board games were played, until we ventured into town again, this time for the lifeboat festival fancy dress parade and other festival activites. And then, miraculously, we found two open picnic tables that could fit all of us at the waterfront pub. We split seafood platters – lobster, mussels, cod, scallops, salmon, calamari. Amazing. The sun set as we sat and ate, rainbow boats bobbing in the harbor. Water had completely returned; sand was sea. 

In the dark, we went back to our cozy cottage. There were fireworks, and we watched them from the bridge. We played board games and drank wine. It was a late night, and it was so, so much special.

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Yorkshire Coast, UK

When: August 2019

How long: 2 nights

Via: Drove our car just over 4 hours from Cambridge to Staithes. We stopped in Newark for dinner. 

Stayed: Staithes – our Airbnb appears to no longer be listed as of writing this. It was right on the harbor. 

Ate – Day 1: The Runcible Spoon (lunch), The Cod and Lobster (dinner)

Did – Day 1: Walked the Cleveland Way Coastal Path between Staithes and Port Mulgrave/Hinderwell