Scarborough: Fair

Scarborough is a very pretty town. If it were an ingredient in a baking recipe, it would be the knob of butter - mildly sweet, rich, essential, and knob shaped. From York, it's approximately an hour on the train (if there hasn't been a line-side fire) going through some pretty countryside and a couple of townships.
 

A view from the castle on the peninsula, showing both beaches

It's worth noting what a lovely and sunny day it was. Although there haven't been any rainy days so far, Wednesday was particularly delightful in its general attitude to life. Families were out in droves looking for outdoor entertainment. Ramblers were out rambling around on a ramble beneath the naked forest, which was, I must say, most heartily anticipating its upcoming appointment with the tailor.

People flooded off the station and tumbled over each other into the streets with wallets and shopping bags, but I could hear seagulls and as I walked down the slope of the main street the walls of the castle beyond came into view. I turned right down a side street, away from the beckoning castle for now, and saw the ocean. I was on the north side of the butter knob, the side with the gentle slopes that edge the water with amusements

The two things I wanted most to see were indicated quickly as I was walking quite literally down the main street - the ocean, with the sound of seagulls, and the castle, which soon showed its walls in the space between two buildings. I turned right down a side street, away from the castle, and finally got a view of the ocean with its small curved bay. I took steps down to the waterfront and crossed the road onto the flat grey sand, grasping at my footprints, and the smell of salt. The water was cold. I bought myself a burger from a little  black pagoda-like box that dispensed food and beverages, and walked down admiring the panoramic view and half-heartedly mocking the dejected donkeys being forced to carry hoards of children, just as Enid Blyton said there would be. Further along there was a man offering passage on a pirate ship, and the amusement park wheels and music churning.

Scarborough Castle is just as a ruined castle should look. It dominates the skyline to the east, stretched across the length of the peninsula's hill, grey-gold-brown and dormant. The light is fitted to suit it. Beneath it the land and trees were the perfect shades of musty purples and browns and flecks of underlying green for the season's tune, flattering with their matching subtlety. This is my first castle. I love it.

Scarborough Castle from within the walls - looking back west

The walkway to the castle takes you through the trees and along the edge of the castle wall, and unsurprisingly has some amazing views over the city. High enough, you can see the curves of both the north and south bays. The hill sheltered from the main breeze and so I found myself removing layers on the walk up, which wasn't even very far. It felt good to be up somewhere higher, and out of the streets.

The keep

The castle has about 2,500 years of history under its belt. The keep is in ruins, broken open for the elements, and besides that all that really remains is the fortress walls, some grated holes, and a scummy old chapel they won't even let you go inside. Its apparent from its prospect why its been settled by mysterious Iron Age ancients, Romans, Vikings, a chap who built it and had it stolen away by Henry II, and why it had roles in the

Civil War and World War I. There was a small museum type dealy in a building within that contained various items (or their reproductions) from the site - a Viking blade, pottery, pipes, dilapidated drinking vessels, and even large cannon balls weighing more than I'd want landing on my head and the tip of a shell from The War. I walked right around the old castle walls, and investigated the keep with all its curious angles and even curves from the broken and worn stones.

Anne Bronte's grave oooohhohoooooooo

I discovered three (or possibly two; it was a little uncertain) graveyards on my wanderings (for at one point I did get somewhat lost and have to navigate by castle keep from some higher land I managed to find). Many were old and made of sandstone, time wearing patterns out of them, and others had been arranged along edges and even at one place in a curious geometric conga line at the foot of lines of trees. The graveyard in St Marys has Anne Bronte's grave, which is instantly marked out from the other old headstones by the daffodils and other small flowers that had been set before it. Some society has even made a little plaque that includes the full original inscription.

I was also amused to find, a little down the hill, a playground with a slide and four rideable figures on springs with a graveyard right beside it. Only a little fence and a thin pathway down the hill sat between them. I'm sure there's a nice little message in that, and in fact on reflection it looks as though those little plastic figurines were already tethered to their own slabs of stone.

I walked around the peninsula also, looking up at the cliffs I'd been above filled with shrieking and honking seabirds, to the south beach. There was more sand here and fewer donkeys, and a warning sign about deadly wave action. On this occasion there was none of that, but by the afternoon the children were wrapped perhaps a little more warmly as they scuffled around in the trapped pools of water and built their own fortresses below the walls of Scarborough Castle.