A visit to Scarborough

There is something desperately romantic about revisiting a place from your childhood and facing the reality of the tatty edges it has developed over the years. It’s almost poetic whichever way you choose to look at it; either as a desolate plain of faded memories and shadows of a happy childhood, or a mismanaged noise of colour and sound that form pictures you’d rather forget.

When you get used to the everyday life in the often bleak hills of the Peak District a visit to the seaside can either be an assault on the senses or a refreshing blast from life, blinding you with bright colours, deafening you with loud hums and reminding you that life really does exist. With all the excitement of the fair, visiting the seaside is - no matter which way you look at it - a change of pace.

A long overdue visit to my childhood hotspot Scarborough as February turns to March brings back fuzzy, fond memories of long forgotten summers.

The weather maintained an indifferent level of wintery sunshine as we thanked Mother Nature  for the break in the gales and sub-zero temperatures. Indifferent to the presence of seaside dwellers and sunshine seekers the air mischievously wafted around the typical smells of vinegar evaporating from fresh-out-of-the-fryer chips and the sickly scent of frying doughnuts. Mingled along with the scent of fresh sea air  it made it impossible to resist a seaside treat!

A pleasing jumble of sour and sweet tied together by ice cold temperature convincing your tongue of flavours of lemon cheesecake or meringue pies.

The sun soon disappeared and the crowds bundled back into their cars to drive in search of the warmth of home leaving the seaside to run wild. Running at full speed and pirouetting with violence holding on to the rights that nature originally intended it to have.

Playing with the final glimmers of the sun, throwing it’s every last energy into being what it has always been; untameable, erratic, and undeniably beautiful in its wildness. Like a child on the sands fuelled by the energy of the bright colours, loud hums and smells of the seaside.

Scarborough, give it a year or two and then we’ll do it again sometime.

Isn’t there a time in everyone’s life for this?