Scarborough

Today was a trip to Scarborough which, as some of you may know, was a place of significance in my early twenties because my then future wife (and Penny's mum of course) trained to be a teacher there and I used to visit for a weekend roughly every three weeks or so whilst she was there. This is also how I know Elizabeth, because she and Sally became friends then and Scarborough is also where I Proposed and Sally accepted. Romantic or what?

This visit was therefore an opportunity to stroll around the town and discover if the old haunts still existed and see how things had changed. Some areas of the town were different but along the seafront it all looked just as it did all those decades ago. Yes, there were slight changes but fundamentally it was pretty much the same, though thankfully there were not so many stalls selling seafood snacks which I simply have never been able to describe as food. There were definitely fewer fishing boats and more yachts in the harbour though - a sign of the times I think.

One essential stop was to the Harbour Bar which is an ice-cream parlour in the style of an American diner, with yellow walls and red 'leather' seats and yes, it has not changed one iota and is exactly as it was in those student days. Even the strawberry milk shake was as I remembered it

A quirky object found in one of the tiny back streets behind the promenade shops I have photographed for you to see - is this the next campervan? I don't think so, but I certainly found it amusing and an interesting take on a theme. I've certainly not seen anything like this before - have you?

Overall we reckon we must have strolled four miles or so around the town and along the length of the seafront before we headed back to the car to return to Goathland. The skies had cleared too, so now you've most likely guessed I'd be out with the camera later in the evening ... and of course I was.

My astro photography tonight was not far away, perhaps two or three miles from the village and up towards the main road to Whitby. The sky wasn't as clear as last time but I still managed a couple of photos before it also turned foggy. To be honest, I was struggling to find some foreground interest for my images so in the end I used my van to help with that. A photo of my van with the Milky Way as a backdrop: sad but true!

I wasn't late tonight as I returned around midnight. This is because I don't want to be tired tomorrow when I head further north to Hadrian's Wall in search of another single tree.Read more