Holidays on Yorkshire's East Coast

Today it's raining. Outside it is dark and gloomy, chilly and wet. Autumn is here, winter not far away. it's strange really, sat inside out of the weather, how people react to sunshine. Outside it's gloomy, the press are full of the encroaching doom and gloom and yet, when the sun shines out people come, driving across to the coast from the cities and towns of the West Riding, ignoring the words of warning and high petrol prices to what l can only assume is to cheer themselves up from the depressing and morbid news columns that journalist hurl at us with what appears to be positive glee! A bracing walk along the promenade at Filey or a voluptuous ice cream sundae is all it takes to put one's life into prospective.

This year has been really weird. We did not know what to expect, what with the credit crunch or recession, if we believed every word written then we would have shut shop and headed off to the sun to become deck chair attendants, the press drifted of course again, OK so people haven't traveled abroad en-mass they appear to have holidayed, here, in the UK. In fact trippers and holidaymakers are still about in the dying embers of september. Back to my point about the weather. As soon as the sun pokes it's head out from behind the cloud, people leap into their cars or onto their bicycles and head out for a good day beside the sea. This past weekend is a good example. Filey, Bridlington and Whitby were absolutely choker block. Car parks were full to bursting, the beaches at Filey were being enjoyed as people walked along the pristine sands, The steps leading to the Abbey in Whitby were as full as a sunday in august!

It's really great to see people enjoying the local landscapes, although it is nice to travel and to visit far flung places, the English landscape is truly spectacular, where else in a short space of time, can you drive through coastal plains of Holderness, soft rolling landscapes of the Yorkshire wolds, to the high heather clad grouse moors peppered with ruined abbeys and moorland crosses of the North Yorkshire Moors.

It is this aspect of Yorkshire l have always found fascinating, the ever changing landscapes, coming as l do from the forests of west Gloucestershire, don't get me wrong, l am a tree person, but l also love the wide open skies and vast vistas that seem to be so common up here in the north. l would also probably add that this part of the world has been, thankfully, avoided by the London based travel journalist, it is some where just off the A1 en route to the new Cornwall, Northumberland. A region of Britain that has not appeared in TV programs, well there is Heartbeat and All Creatures Great and Small [which, incidentally was filmed in the Yorkshire Dales despite the books being set in Thirsk and on the North Yorks Moors,] glossy magazines have not extolled the virtues of holidaying on the east Coast or Yorkshire Wolds, we have got away lightly so far, except that is, for the last two publication of a monthly magazine extolling the virtues of living in the countryside, a countryside that doesn't have mud, the sort that stains wellingtons and creeps up along the inside of jeans, of earthy smells and of tractors that clog up the roads, a countryside where families decorate their homes with flowery fabrics and and bunches of dried herbs artistically hung from beams whilst Boden clothes are casually slung over worn and artistically mismatched furniture carefully painted in the latest Farrow & Ball colour scheme. Anyway, this magazine has discovered us, this area. The article inform its readers that there are wonderful pubs in this area, that have creative menus using the best of the locally produced ingredients, from lamb to free range pork, vegetables and dairy produce. The countryside has also been 'discovered', our rolling hills, narrow dales, deserted villages and slightly faded statley homes.

However there is still one place that is un-charted, omitted from the southern journalist's list of places to visit; the east Yorkshire coast.......