Alone Beneath The Sky: Rumination: Spring Jollies & Planet Spotting

Blogging with a View, in Scarborough.

Sometimes, the value of a week away from home really cannot be understated and before we press on into the High Season, it's worth pausing for a brief moment to contemplate just how good getting away from it all has been for me at the end of May, completely breaking away from all that's going on in my regular life and work in Leeds, and putting some considerable mental and physical distance between it and me, allowing me to properly unwind after some testing weeks and to allow me to get back into a creative mindset that had almost fallen way to the point of irredeemability, restoring my belief that I will be able to continue pursing the hobbies that I've invested so much into over the last decade. Peace and Quiet is wholly under-rated need in this age of almost constant activity, and we really managed to find that on this break away, keeping away from all the disturbances that you might expect when staying in a seaside town, which we were only just doing, as our let was to be found about three miles out from Scarborough town centre, right on the edge of the Throxenby and Newby estates, and looking over the hillsides of the North Yorkshire Moors, where the River Derwent and Scalby Beck rise, on an urban country lane where there was little traffic to be had outside of commuter hours, allowing us all the silence that we needed to allow us to unwind. Thusly, across all my days off the trail, we had time in the mornings and evening to get busy with catching up on almost two months worth of blogging, which you wouldn't know from the timestamps on these posts, but anyone who's been following me for a while should know that my time-keeping is a complete tissue of lies, and that I work better when away from my own desk, despite it being set up for my needs with an appropriately adjustable chair, leading me to conclude that I do my best work when sat at a dining table with an uncomfortable seat that needs to be padded with random cushions, working in a posture that surely couldn't be doing my back, neck or arm joints any favours.

Six hours a day spent at the keyboard might leave you thinking that left little scope for activity was left, but that thankfully wasn't the case, even factoring in My Mum's need to unwind after one of the busiest fortnights that she's had in years, but we managed to get a decent trip out on every non-walking day so that we might learn the geographical lie of Scarborough, learning that it's a lot more hilly than might be expected, right from our Saturday trip to the supermarket, followed by a jaunt along the main streets of Westborough and Newborough, which lead us through the main shopping before settling into the decline towards the harbour, not a distance that either of us are needing to travel on a casual stroll, meaning we need lunchtime fortification at the NAAFI café before we return. Monday has us focussed on the local point of interest that we'd both had in our sights, regarded from afar on all our previous visits but never approached, and that's Scarborough Castle. prominent on its headland and an absolutely fascinating relic of the town's long pre-resort history, where much longer than two hours could be spent tracing the sites' easily visible stories, reaching from the Roman era to the Civil War, if it wasn't for the breezes blowing over the headland 70m above the town, where the view over the town and up and down the coast is almost as worthy of the price of admission, and while you're up this end, the church yard of St Mary's need to be visited, so that we might find the grave of Anne Bronte, stitching this trip neatly to the one we made two years ago, through Bronte country. As we aren't jaunting out to the NYMR this time around, we'll have to get our train ride fix by taking a Tuesday afternoon trip to the North Bay miniature railway instead, the world's largest according to the blurb, to tootle us around from Peasholm park past the waterpark, the outdoor theatre and up the seafront to the aquarium complex at Scalby Mills, while also taking in the views along the North Bay itself, the 'hidden' beach, with its much more sedate pace and the seafront hotels sitting at an elevated remove from the shore, an altogether excellent spot for a perambulation on the sand, among the other visitors entirely made up of seniors and families with baby and toddler-aged children.

Westborough, Scarborough.

Newborough, Scarborough.

Scarborough Castle Gate House.

Scarborough Castle Keep and Curtain Wall.

The North Bay Railway.

Sacrborough North Bay.

Thursday proved to be the only gloomy-ish day that we had, but that didn't prevent us taking a wander down to the South Bay, and walking down past the Grand Hotel, over the Spa Bridge, and through the South Cliff gardens to the Spa complex itself, before trailing back along the sands between the sea and the beach-goers for the full length of the Foreshore Road, to meet the harbour and the edges of the old town, showing up its vintages along the length of Sandside, where we find a sheltered sun trap to have our obligatory ice cream before finding that the long walk to the town up Eastborough is indeed a stretch and a half, especially at the end of a circuit of around 3 miles distance. Even when heading away on Friday, we can find a substantial distraction by revisiting Eden Camp at Malton, where we previously came in 2016, but found it a difficult tour due to Dad's mobility issues at the time, but this time around provides a much calmer route between the many huts to learn of the Wartime histories that it presents, where we can extract much more interest from the local tales of evacuees and the site's use as a PoW camp in the 1940s than can be had from military paraphernalia, where a three hour visit still really isn't long enough to take it all in, especially as some of the presentations can seem all a bit too emotionally overwhelming. ~~~ All told, an excellent break away, placing ourselves at a considerable remove from West Yorkshire for the first time in ages, in a holiday home that only had the drawbacks of a shower cubicle that was far too small for even diminutive types like ourselves, and a bedroom that really didn't offer me the blackout conditions that I need for extended nights of sleep, but Beechwood View, which is hilariously named, already looks like a spot we could easily be returning to as my brain already starts pondering the idea of walking four legs of the Cleveland Way along the North Yorkshire coast in 2024, which might feel like we're getting ahead of ourselves as we're yet to hatch a plan for the late Summer week that I've got booked off work already.

South Bay, Scarborough.

Scarborough Harbour.

Eden Camp.

The Prefab, Eden Camp.
~~~

Beechwood View, our new home from home.

And the View was definitely worth the price.

Otherwise, my motivations for booking a house with an open aspect to the west and northwest is apparent when you consider that we are still dedicating our time to watching the skies, especially at the time of year when I'm turning away from the dusk hours and might just remember to look out of a window to spy Venus still putting on its -4 magnitude displays, deep into the Spring, but when your picture window faces west, the long hours of twilight into night allow for multiple views of planets and our satellite as they decline and set, especially when the skies are as clear and relatively free of cloud as they have been. Our reward for our decision is six consecutive evenings of having planets and stars visible in the western sky in the window between 9pm and 11.30pm, when a venture out for a few minutes into the yard or street isn't an expedition, and the chill that belies the warm days isn't overwhelming or something that you have to wrap up against, allowing us to see the waxing crescent moon rising though its 2nd to 5th day phases (it's 1st day appearance post-New Moon being beyond our observational skills), while also providing some excellent earthshine nights, which regularly come around in May it seems, as it orbits to the east to join the still rising Venus in Gemini and the now receding Mars in Cancer. It's the nights of the 23rd and 24th that are the most impressive however, as the Moon passes it conjunction with Venus and moves into a composition with Castor and Pollux on the Tuesday, before sharing a line of sight with Mars on Wednesday, after an evening of intruding cloud had passed, giving me exactly what I'd wanted to observe of five bright magnitude objects appearing withing few degrees of each other in the Spring skies, which I'd have needed several hours of excursions on foot to see from home (where incidentally we do spot the 7th day Moon passing though the gate of Leo, between Regulus and Algeiba, once we've returned to West Yorkshire).