Thursday September 8th We left Scarborough and chasing relatives addresses behind for some sightseeing and headed northwards to Robin Hood Bay. This picturesque old fishing village is on the Heritage coast of the North Yorkshire Moors. It was a glorious drive over the North Moors, with flowering heather blanketing the moors.
The Bay has a fascinating history that you can read about here. There is no visitor traffic allowed down into the village via the very steep and narrow road so it was a walk down the vertiginous hill. The vertigo suffering member of the touring party aka Roy, didn’t venture too far down, he waited for us to explore. We didn’t venture all the way down…going down is fine, it’s the coming back up that would be problem!!!….but we did venture part way down and out to a lookout via some very narrow cobbled paths.
After a wander around, taking in the views and reading the information boards brushing up on our historical knowledge, it was back to the car and on to Staithes. This is another wonderful fishing village on the coast, this time we managed to drive down to the village and find a park, it was after 5pm by now.
There is another tradition from this area that I was hoping to glean some knowledge and information about and that is the traditional knitted fisherman’s jumper called a Gansy or Guernsey. These sweaters were knitted by the wives and mothers of fishermen with individual patterns of various stitches pertaining to villages, families, and individuals. So what makes a Gansey? The Gansey is a unique type of jumper traditionally worn by fishermen. They are knitted with 5 ply worsted wool in one piece with no seams. Five small double ended needles or wires are used to knit in the round creating a really tight knit (or close knit) which creates a wind and somewhat waterproof protection against the elements. The intricate patterns often concentrate towards the upper part of the garment around the shoulders, arms and chest and are often made reversible so they can be worn either way around prolonging the wear of the Gansey before it needs repair. On a darker note, the jerseys individual patterns were also used to identify a fisherman’s body if they happened fall overboard and succumb to the elements.
I do recall Dad wearing what he called a Gansey especially when he went fishing, I didn’t find any Ganseys in our travels (not that I was looking too hard!) but it was good to see the environment and fishing vessels in which they were worn. Now, back to our travels.
By the time we had finished our wander around the village and the waterfront the sun was setting and the evening drawing in so it was back to the car for the short drive back down the coast to Whitby where we were going to have fish and chips for dinner.
We couldn’t get reservations at our first choice of restaurant but this restaurant came highly recommended. We had just sat down and ordered our meal when the news about the death of Queen Elizabeth II broke. We all sat quietly for a while letting the news sink in, we drank a toast to her before continuing with our meal.
After dinner, it was back into the car for the drive back to Scarborough where, at the B&B, we showed Sue & Martin a couple of movies we had on the computer. These were home movies that Dad had taken in 1963 in his cine camera and I had recently had the movies converted to digital format (thank you David & Marilyn). We all laughed loudly when watching the movie it came to Sherwood Street showing the same street signage I had taken a photo of the previous day and the same business in the same premises on the street. In fact the street looked very much the same.
A very big day of memory making, and we will definitely remember where we were when the news broke of Her Majesty’s death. May she Rest In Peace after a lifetime of dedicated service.
The Vanninis' Manoeuvres 