Saltburn by the Sea

This summer we didn't take a vacation or a holiday, as our English friends would call it, but I still wanted to set eyes on the ocean and have a good "beach day" with the kids.  The Lord was so kind to give us the most beautiful day imaginable at a nearby seaside town.  I did end up wishing I'd worn pants (trousers for my English friends) because the wind off the North Sea was quite cold, but you couldn't find fault with the sunshine or the big blue skies.

I think all the Americans would agree that the English habit of naming towns with a descriptor--by the sea, for instance---is beautiful and quaint to our ears.

I never like trying to give historical background information about the places we visit because my memory of what we read while we were there is sure to prove faulty, and I'm a little too lazy to go look it up again.  But as far as I can remember, Saltburn by the Sea was built when the railroad was being built, so it's a newer town, built sometime in the 1800s.  It's really new by English standards, and it's new enough that the roads were a lot wider than usual.

There were lots of people around the pier, but if you walked a bit further you could have a bit of beach to yourself.  As we walked we learned a few things that would be essential to the British sea-going experience.  Everyone had little roll-up canvas "walls" that stuck in the sand and blocked the wind.  That would have made my reading spot a lot warmer!

James greeted the bracing wind with a manly roar.

Ella made sure her gymnastics skills were still intact.

KJ bought two kites for a pound at Poundland.  I'm sorry to say that we could not get them to stay in the air despite all of our best efforts.  They were worth the money for the amount of laughter we got out of our desperate attempts, though.

We stayed until the sun started hiding behind the clouds more often than not, and then we said our farewells to Saltburn by the Sea. We'll come back.  North Yorkshire has the most beautiful views, don't you think?

Saltburn also boasts the only remaining working water-powered lift (I THINK.  Again, I don't claim that these posts are completely accurate.) to take you up and down to the beach.  The queue was quite long, so we took the stairs.