Scarborough has a bit of a reputation. It’s where Boomers and Gen-X always seem to hit on when talking about miserable rainy childhood holidays in the 60s and 70s and based on that, I wasn’t expecting much. Mind you, part of the reason for my low expectations was that I was travelling pretty much the entire length of the country by train, so I wasn’t 100% sure I’d even get there. But what with two fairly long days of train travel dominating my plans for the weekend, I hadn’t even looked at Scarborough itself.
I was there for the Trefoil Guild’s Annual Meeting. The Trefoil Guild is Guiding for adults. It started just over 80 years ago as the Old Guides, meant for girls in their teens and twenties who’d aged out of Guides to stay in touch with friends and with the organisation and somehow, today, it’s morphed into something like the WI for retired Guiders. Actually, it’s open to anyone who wants to join and uphold the Guiding ethos, whether they’ve ever been a leader or not, whether they’ve ever been a Guide or not or even whether they’re female or not. The Trefoil is a separate legal entity from Girlguiding, not bound by any particular child safeguarding rules and has plenty of husbands tagging along, so they can cheerfully allow anyone over 18 to join with no restrictions. Yeah, in practice it’s massively dominated by ladies in their 60s and 70s. I was a little bit of a freak when I joined at thirty a decade ago but numbers drop every year – they lose more out the top than they gain at the bottom so something’s going to have to change, and this despite all the younger, more active and less evening-meeting-based Guilds they try to feature in every magazine.
So the extent of my research was “how far is it to my ‘boutique B&B’ from the station?” and “how far is it to Scarborough Spa?” which is where the meeting was being held. To my disappointment, there’s no spa at Scarborough Spa, it’s just a big conference and entertainment venue. As for how far, I stumbled upon it on my first evening when I left the aforementioned boutique B&B to walk in the direction of the sea. Pretty much at the end of my road was the oldest cliff lift in the country, still functioning, and the Spa is at the bottom.
I admit, I spent part of the weekend wanting to demonstrate that I’m more active and agile than the average Trefoil member so I took the winding hairpin paths down the cliff. Came back up by the cliff lift, though!
I wasn’t expecting a massive curved bay, cliffs at both ends and a vast expanse of yellow sand at low tide. That first afternoon, I stood above the cliff and frankly gawped at the view. Turquoise water, a ruined castle on the hill, a lighthouse… why had no one told me Scarborough is beautiful? Why does everyone talk about it like a joke? And this is just the South Bay – if you walk along the beach and round that rocky headland, you’ll find a second bay, this one much wilder and quieter.
I spent a lot of the weekend walking on the beach. That afternoon, I walked north up the seafront, past arcades and beach souvenir shops and fish & chip shops and proper fish restaurants – it’s all got the potential to be seedy and rundown and old-fashioned but it’s not. Well, I suppose it’s a little old-fashioned but that’s not a criticism. Scarborough started life around the 17th century as a spa resort, as it had a spring of natural mineral water, has a proud boat building heritage and then became a Victorian seaside resort. I read all the details on the Portholes to History plaques on the Marine Drive walk around the headland. Like any coastal town, it lays its claim to the Titanic – in this case, that it’s the hometown of Sir Edward Harland of Harland & Wolff, who built it and also of 6th Officer Moody, who was on the bridge when the frantic call of “Iceberg right ahead!” came through, the only senior officer who didn’t survive the disaster. Scarborough also received the opening shots of WWI when the German navy turned up out of the mist at dawn and bombarded the town.
I did the old-fashioned seaside things. I bought a stick of Scarborough rock (four, actually – peppermint, spearmint, fruit and strawberry), I had an ice cream, I walked in the shallows until sand and salt under my sandals straps rubbed actual holes into my foot, I went up the cliff lift, which gives out old-fashioned tiny paper tickets and interpret a return as “two trips” rather than strictly “one up and one down” and I had my lunch on Saturday from one of the seaside kiosks observed closely by a massive gull.
On Saturday morning, I was down at the Spa far too early so I walked across the sand and went to the RNLI shop. The station itself isn’t open to the public unless you peer longingly through the glass door at the shiny Shannon-class, at which point they tell you that there’s a staircase leading up to a walkway where you can have a proper look. I’m a big RNLI fan and a big Shannon fan. Scarborough’s had theirs, which is called Frederick William Plaxton since 2016 and it looks brand new. So does the tractor and cradle they launch it with – not a speck of sand on it and no sign of wear on the tyres. It might have been delivered yesterday. I know you need to take good care of expensive lifesaving equipment like your state-of-the-art lifeboat and launcher but wow! Go visit your local station and pop them a donation, they do an incredible job and 1000% don’t deserve the derision they get from the gammon.
At 11, I headed back to the Spa for the stalls. Every region and country has a stall and so do some of the national initiatives – here’s the awards, here’s the international opportunities, here’s the feedback table etc. I went to the Meeting at Portsmouth two years ago and thought they were much more extensive then. All the same, I came out with a (far too big) bucket hat from North West, a set of STARS badges and a Motivate badge and a renewed determination to look at the bits of my Gold Voyage Award that I’m not actively working on. Voyage is similar to DofE, in that it’s a multi-sectional personal development challenge. I’m working on Explore My World and Myself – two projects in one, really, the Bath Book and the research trips necessary for it, but I haven’t really thought about Service, Teamwork or Skills.
Lunch back at the kiosk, a cheese toastie, and then it was time for the Meeting itself. That meant 1,250 ladies in red packed into one of the halls – it’s a non-uniformed organisation with a uniform so almost everyone was in red, mostly official polo shirts, a few official blue jackets and for an organisation that leans so heavily towards the silk scarf, a lot of red and gold neckerchiefs. My local Guide leader theorised that most of them were/are leaders and old habits like uniforms and neckerchiefs die hard. Only one person wears a neckerchief in my own Guild but more than half of them wear the silk scarf.
Anyway, the Meeting is for business. What have we done in the last year, what’s coming next, finance report and so on. A fashion show of the new “Trefoil wear”. Girlguiding is having a new uniform next month, from top to bottom to make us look like a unified organisation. I knew Trefoil would be included in that but I assumed it would be just as secretive – a hint here, a tease there. Nope! Trefoil is a separate entity and we saw the lot, plus prices.
Then we had a speaker. This was Siobhan Daniels, who goes by the title of Retirement Rebel and wants people to 1) stop being ashamed and belittled by being older and 2) have more adventures in your older years. It went down pretty well with Trefoil’s average age demographic but I’d be really interested to go again next year and find out if anyone actually did anything tangible as a result.
There was entertainment in the evening but I skipped it. I’d rather walk on the beach and eat weird cheesy things and ice cream with brownies and cause further damage to my feet than sit in a hall again surrounded by older ladies. Not that they’re all older, not by a long way, and the ones who’ve come to the Meeting are, by definition, the more active and adventurous ones. But I’d sat on a train for six or seven hours, I was going to enjoy Scarborough while I was there.
On Sunday, I hiked up the castle. Perhaps not great weather for it; it was far too hot for an uphill climb like that but it was also too windy to properly appreciate the castle. I mean, it’s a great castle. It’s a ruin but the keep has two walls intact and there’s a wall running along one edge. Otherwise, it’s just a nice place to sit in the sun. This hilltop has been inhabited, more or less continuously, since the Iron Age. It’s a very good defensive position. The Romans made use of it, the Saxons built a chapel there, the Normans put the castle up there and then it had a starring role in the Civil War where it was originally ruined, before Germany put the final touches to what was left. Now it has nice meadows and a cafe and views of both bays.
If I had a bit longer, I’d have liked to go up to Whitby and over to Beverly and maybe even run up to Durham. But I had three trains to – hopefully – catch and an entire country to traverse and you can’t stay there forever, not if you’re getting on a plane to Iceland in 48 hours. Yes, I’d come to this region again. But in the other hand, I have nice Victorian and Georgian seaside resorts on my doorstep and have no need to travel anywhere near this far to enjoy them. That said, you’d be shoulder-to-shoulder with sunburned grockles if you’d spent that weekend (or any since) on Bournemouth beach.
I Am A Polar Bear 