Final day of Whitby

Another bright sunny day when I finally woke up, about half ten. Been really lucky with the weather this year. Shorts on every day, and only Monday rained. Shame it was Regatta Day.

Walked up to the Abbey, and got my favourite views out over Whitby Bay and the estuary of the River Esk. By now I'd remembered that I could take panorama shots with my camera .



Went in Whitby church, which always looks to me as though someone built a church then threw lots of different bits at it.


Really unusual inside, with lots of small enclosures which people sat in.



The posh ones have names on the doors, and some are labelled "for strangers only".


The pulpit has three tiers, and an ear trumpet as the wife of the vicar was deaf and she sat at the bottom with the tubes from the trumpets in her ears.

Walked down the 199 steps from the Abbey to the town and got more great views.


Stuart has a terrible habit of muttering random numbers as we go down, which really annoys the kids as they run up the steps counting them as they go up...

Just past the bottom of the steps is the kipper smoking house, much featured on various TV cooking programmes.


Caught a bit more dancing at the Bandstand, bumped into loads of friends as we wandered round, and then had my fourth Whitby fish for lunch. I've eaten so much fish my brain will be great, but am a bit worried about the waistline....

It was so sunny, I walked along the beach. It's a very traditional seaside beach, with deck chairs and wind breaks for hire, donkeys, ice cream, families building sand castles ( and a sand whale!), and playing cricket.

Friday afternoon is traditionally the workshop showcase where everyone who's been in a workshop during the week learning to play an instrument or learning a new dance tradition gets the chance to perform it in front of an audience. This year we went because my friend Rebekah had been in the clog workshop, learning some great Pat Tracy mixed rhythm steps. Here she is doing the Lancashire Irish ones.



Rapper is always a popular workshop, and this year was no exception, with Snark Rapper having about 8 sets up, some in fancy dress. At the end of the demo, they got all the teams to come together in one giant curly ( you need to be a rapper dancer to understand that). And it was followed by some big multiple locks, some worked, some took longer!



Then the final procession led by the Whitby Garland made with local heather, collected from the moors on Thursday. Traditionally carried by a sword team, this year it was Snark's turn.



Also traditional for them to drink a glass of beer in all the pubs they go past. Glad to say they managed it.



We regrouped back at the cottage and cooked a great fish pie (more fish, even had crab as a starter). Thought we'd better try and drink what we'd got left, before packing the cars tomorrow morning, after all, don't want to take any home do we? Sat around for a while then walked up for a final pint at The Elsinore, then to the final ceilidh. Martin Harvey calling and Hekety playing, a great way to finish. By midnight all of the other events have finished and everyone piles into the Spa. The dance floor is rocking and bar packed. Finished with The Willow Tree again, and then everyone comes in for the closing ceremony.

The garland is paraded in

and then guarded by the attendant team, as the company, led by Will Noble, sings Wild Mountain Thyme:



Then, the garland is dismantled by the team and everyone gets a piece of heather as a symbol of good luck and peace, and to make sure you return next year. Now everyone waits patiently for their piece:


Up until about 15 years ago the garland was suspended in the ceiling, and then lowered, and there was a free for all!

Here's me with my heather, not looking as if I've drunk too much at all!

We have no courgettes.....

Another bright sunny day yesterday and off to another lecture, this time on "The first music seller in the land", the story of the professional street ballad singer in pre and early industrial society, very erudite for early in the morning! Delivered by Vic Gammon from Newcastle University, it was very interesting. There were thousands of street ballad singers in the 17th 18th and early 19th centuries singing about the events of the time and selling broadsheets to make a living. They were a very important part of our culture and heritage. I was surprised by how many of them were women, especially with young children. I suppose it was an occupation abandoned women could do, you just took the baby with you. It was a job with a relatively small outlay, the singers either bought their ballads from printers or wrote them themselves, and could make 10 times the cost if they sold all of them. It was the commercial music of the day, and what most people listened to. Many of the contemporary illustrations show the singers with a hand cupped to the ear ( not a finger in the ear as people who want to disparage folk singers say), so this wasn't invented by Ewan McColl, but has been around for ages and allows the sound of your voice to be amplified to your ear (try it if you don't believe me).

As it was till sunny, I spent the next hour sitting at the bandstand watching various dance teams. Gog Magog Molly must be the most colourful:







If you don't know what Molly dancing is, it's from the East Midlands and East Anglia and has a very particular style. Here's a clip of Gog Magog doing the Oompa Lumpa dance.



Hexamshire Lasses dance the north west clog style, very similar to the style that my team, Yorkshire Chandelier, dance.








A nice team, and we've learnt one of their dances called Hexham Abbey.

There are allegedly only 5 traditional sword teams in the country, 2 of them from Sheffield ( Grenoside and Handsworth), and one from the Whitby area, the Goathland Plough Stots, so it was nice to see them turn up to dance.






My favourite sword tradition is Rapper, originating from the Northeast of England, and there's some great teams around. It's fast and exciting and you have to be faily fit to do it. I was part of a rapper side for a few years, but we stuck to some of the more sedate figures! Snark Rapper are always good entertainment:



When the weather's good I can sit for hours at The Bandstand watching the dancing, you get some great views of Whitby and the harbour.


Lots of people go out on boat trips - on old lifeboats, fishing boats, small sailing boats. As someone who gets sea sick thinking about it, I stay on dry land.


We'd decided to go out with friends for a posh meal in the evening, so went back to the cottage mid afternoon for a bit of a mong (Whitby speak for doing nothing much) and a pre dinner cocktail. The meal was great, and finished in time for us to get up to the Spa for the evening's concert which started at 9. But, there was already a queue at 8.30.
So we joined it and watched as the stewards counted us to work out how many of the line would actually get in. Luckily we did, and were treated to another great performance by John Kirkpatrick, followed by an hour and a half of the madness that is Les Barker and Keith Donnelly.

Les Barker is a poet. Some of his poems are serious, some are not, and it's the comedy ones he does live. Most are well known to the audience who join in. Last night Keith accompanied him on some, such as No Courgettes, sung to the tune of No Regrets. "Have you got any news of the iceberg? " a sad tale of the polar bear asking about his family after the Titanic had smashed the iceberg which they were traveling on, is one of my favourites.



But his encore was the best, "Dachshunds with erections can't climb stairs".

The concert finished round eleven thirty and then all of us including the kids with us were straight into the late night extra, where for the fourth year running we had a themed ceilidh. The festival's patron Eliza Carthy, puts a band together and they adapt a particular band's music to dance ceilidh dances to. So far we've had Abba, Queen and the Beatles - this time it was Tamla Motown's turn. It was an amazing night, one of the best so far, and if you want to now what it's like ceilidh dancing to Stevie Wonder's superstition, watch this.



Another late walk home, but beautiful clear evening, and a good view of Jupiter, which has been bright all week.

Here we go round the Mulberry Tree

Woke up this morning late, but we had stayed up till the early hours, to find the rain had gone and the sun was out again. Walked into town with Julie and Andrea for a session called When This Old Hat was New which was about life in the Nineteenth century, illustrated by songs of the period. Started with the Napoleonic Wars, including a lovely rendition of Bonny Light Horseman, a song I've been listening to for years, but never really thought about the meaning before. Then the industrial revolution, and some interesting stuff about the building of the railways by the navvies. A very hard life, I didn't know that it took a year to go from being a labourer to a navvy as you had to build up the strength and stamina to shovel 20 tons of earth a day by hand.

The industrial revolution had many casualties. The hand weavers were skilled craftsmen, who had a good wage and a high standing in the community, and suddenly found their jobs were no longer needed as the looms were now in the factories and powered by steam. They had to make a choice

Transportation was the standard punishment for any crime, including very petty ones, until it was a noticed that this was just shipping people out to take part in the gold digging! Some great songs from this era and it was interesting hearing the background to them explained. Of course the other thing of note in this century was the Beerhouse Act which was passed in 1830, allowing anyone who paid a small excise tax to set themselves up selling beer. 45,000 new establishments sprung up to sell beer including many front rooms. Less than 3 years later the government had to set up a select committee to inquire into the causes of drunkenness in the working classes.

After this educational event I went to some storytelling. I love
storytelling, very relaxing, and today it featured my favourite storyteller, Taffy Thomas. I remember Taffy from years ago when he was with the Fabulous Salami Brothers and used to come the folk club I helped run, Hefts and Blades. They had a great juggler with them who we knew as Richie 3 Balls Salami. He used to ask for any 3 objects from the audience and juggle with them. I've seen people pass him anything from apples to collapsed buggies and he's done it. About 20 years ago Taffy had a very bad stroke, and has used storytelling as a form of therapy. I love him, but was sad today that I left before he put his tale coat on.

A regroup for lunch in The Shambles, then a quick walk through the park. There's a tree on the edge of the park which most people walk past, but I, and a few others in the know, look up into it, reach up and grab beautiful ripe Mulberries from it. It's the only Mulberry tree I've ever seen and a well kept Whitby secret.



Then to Dance Diversity Challenge, a folk version of University Challenge which today featured pitted Snark Rapper against the Chiltern Hundreths. Ably refereed by Stanley Accrington, it was very funny as usual. The picture rounds were pictures of dance teams from strange angles or only showing a small piece of kit, and we were pleased to see the black boots and gaiters of Handsworth Sword team in one, but nobody except us got it right.

Came back for our annual seafood salad tea of lobster, crab, prawns, mackerel, smoked salmon and baked herring, but unfortunately we'd been given the wrong bag in the fish shop so only had half of what we'd bought, so no crab. Very disappointing!

Back again to the festival along the river - we walk the mile or so into the town about twice a day, so keeps us fit and the views are worth it.



The evening concert featured the last night in Whitby this year of The Wilsons, and they were determined to enjoy it. Their slightly anarchic humour had me in stitches, especially when they uncovered a screen at the back of the stage and pretended it was a green screen like weather forecasters have. Guess you had to be there. Very powerful singing as always. two clips below, a short one of them singing Close the Coal House door, and one of their humour.






Then off to the late night extra where 422 were the band and my favourite caller, Martin Harvey called our favourite dance The Willow Tree to finish with. Then to round things off, Kingsmen rapper burst in as everyone was leaving and gave a great impromptu performance. Sorry about glitch in middle of video - got so excited by double tumble, pressed pause by mistake!




Our latest night so far, being nearly 3am when we finally decided to get some sleep!

Leaky loo and first Saturday in Whitby

Had a really good meal Friday night in Lastingham, finishing off with a huge Raspberry Pavlova. In the bar later Alec and Donald played their squeezeboxes and we sang a few songs.

Bedtime was livened up by discovering our bathroom had water on the floor which had leaked into the dining room downstairs. Couldn't find the source so went to bed, only to discover it was the saniflow system when I flushed the loo and water (clean!) poured everywhere again. Landlord was on phone to a plumber at half past midnight who agreed to come the next day, but until then we couldn't use the bathroom, and had to go into the pub in the middle of the night to use the facilities! Quite spooky, and really surprised their two pedigree Persian cats who are obviously used to having the pub to themselves in the night.

Next day, Saturday, drove to Whitby. I love the drive from Pickering over the moors which are purple with heather at this time of year, and we always get excited when we come over the hill and get a view of Whitby in the distance, especially the Abbey and the Metropole.



After shopping we had our traditional crab sandwich lunch in the Duke of York. Love Whitby crab.



Then watched some dancing - including Snark rapper up with two sets and performing rapper in stereo:




The we walked up to the Elsinore and watched the opening parade of all the dance teams - about 15 teams in total, and the pictures are of Snark Rapper, Silkstone Green, Gog Magog Molly and Gaorsach Rapper:



Tea was more traditional fair of fish and chips, and unusually for Whitby it was warm enough to eat in the garden. Then we dashed to the Pavilion Theatre to see Sid Kipper (aka Chris Sugden), a spoof Norfolk singer and storyteller. Usually he's hilarious, but I didn't think he was on his normal good form. He obviously had a bad cold which affected his performance, and was quite difficult to follow. Songs were still funny though. Then into the spa for the first dance of the festival. Martin Harvey on good calling form as usual, and the band, Heckety, were excellent. Well of course they should be, coming from Sheffield.

Walked home Andrea's way through the Whalebones - there are so many different ways back to our cottage we have to take it turns to chose. Quick nightcap, and in bed for 0140, quite early for Whitby!

Hopefully the weather will say good, the light on the way to the concert was wonderful.