Whitby - costumes, walks and salad!

Tuesday

Long walk up to the Rugby Club in the morning for a talk on traditional dress in the North East. Never quite sure what you're going to get in these talks, but this was really interesting. It was about the fisher women of a village in the North East called Cullercoats, and the lady giving the talk had researched their costume. Lots of petticoats, thick skirt, blouse, shawl and bonnet. And of course, open drawers. Called either easy access if they were in two pieces, or harvesters if they were in one piece. As in all is gathered in :-). Very interesting talk.

After that we headed for a rather fine crab salad at The Shambles

And then a walk to the Spa. The sun was shining and got some great views of this beautiful town.

On at the spa was a concert from John Kirkpatrick who was doing "Tunes from the Trenches" in commemoration of 100 years since WW1 started. He sang a mixture of songs from both wars, some of them music hall based, some from the soldiers, some funny, some very sad. Excellent concert.

After that it was Family Folk Tunes where a 100 folkies really are asked an assortment of questions - I know, I'm one of them :-) - which the two teams have to guess the answers to. Another fine event MCd by Stanley Accrington,

Then back home for a very nice beef stew cooked in the slow cooker, and a bit of a rest before setting off to the spa again where we had a few dances and watched Mortimers Morris do the floor spot.

It was also the annual Speed Ploughing Championship were various people see how fast they can play 2As and 2Bs of the speed the plough. Winners are normally around 15/16 seconds, with additional prizes given for humour!

Wednesday
We'd agreed that this was going to be our annual seafood salad day so I started by going shopping. Very few lobsters or crabs to be got, probably the seas were too choppy. But I managed to hunt some down, and some other tasty things. Then a walk up Caedmon's Trod which used to lead us to our holiday cottage. Quite a trek but it did give us amazing views every morning and evening.

Of course the cottages fell down a couple of years ago, which is really sad

Then onto the abbey where I had a great ice cream. Not the wisest thing to do when you've walked up three to burn off some calories.



Great view from up there, and I watched the Bark Endeavour being tossed all over the place on the choppy seas. Glad I wasn't on it - felt sick just watching 



Then walked down and discovered that the Abbey steps had a marker on every 10th step. Who knew???

On my way down I discovered a lonely Morris Dancer dancing his way up to the Abbey, and he made it to the top. The others cheated and walked!




Cheeky pint in The Angel and then to the Coliseum to here Graham Pirt give his excellent history in slides and songs of the Miners Union in the North East which although we've heard it before is excellent.

Back for tea!!

It was quite a salad and Beka, Paul and family came to help us eat it. Lots of good food, fizz and wine.
Then a few dances at the late night extra, and back for the usual nightcap.


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