Scarborough

I have a weakness for Victorian seaside towns that haven’t fully updated themselves. The retrofitting of genuine pleasure with artisanal coffee shops and concept hotels is fine as far as it goes, but there’s something I find more honest about a place that still offers donkey rides on the beach and a funicular railway that’s been running since 1875 and sees no reason to change. Scarborough is that place.

The town’s claim to be England’s first seaside resort is broadly accepted — people were being prescribed the mineral springs here for their health as early as the 1620s, and the Georgian and Victorian hotel terraces that climb above the South Bay reflect two centuries of investment in the proposition that standing near cold northern sea water is somehow restorative. Having done it several times, I remain unconvinced about the health claims but fully convinced about the scale of the bay.

The Castle and the Headland

Scarborough Castle occupies a promontory of rock between the North and South Bays that was fortified during the Iron Age and hasn’t really stopped being fortified since. The Norman castle that dominates it now was built in the twelfth century and saw enough siege action over the following four hundred years to be spectacular rubble by the Civil War. The keep still stands — roofless but intact to its full height — and the views from the headland are the best in town: both bays visible simultaneously, the sea in two different directions, the resort architecture of the South Bay laid out below.

There’s a Roman signal station on the eastern tip of the headland, less dramatically preserved but adding to the sense that this particular piece of rock has been important to someone in every century worth counting.

The South Bay

The South Bay is where Scarborough’s resort identity lives — the Grand Hotel (an enormous 1867 pile on the cliff that was briefly the largest hotel in Europe), the Spa complex, the funicular that drops from the Esplanade to the beach, the beach itself running south in a long arc of sand backed by the usual apparatus of British seaside hospitality. Fish and chips. Amusements. A miniature railway. A paddling pool that predates the concept of irony.

I’m aware that this sounds like a place best suited to people who find seaside nostalgia charming and are seven years old. The correct response is to arrive in late September when the holiday crowds have gone and the light over the bay turns that particular bronze-gold of northern autumn afternoons, buy chips at the stand near the slipway, and sit on the seawall while the waves do their work on the sand. The scene explains itself.

The North Bay

The North Bay is quieter and has always been slightly less fashionable, which recommends it. The beach here is backed by the Valley Gardens rather than Victorian hotels, and the Scarborough Sea Life Sanctuary at the northern end is one of the better aquariums of its size in England — strong on North Sea species, tanks that actually communicate something about how cold northern water works ecologically.

Peasholm Park, behind the North Bay, has a boating lake, a pagoda, and a very serious Naval Warfare event on certain summer Sundays in which scale model warships re-enact naval battles on the lake. I did not see this. I have since watched footage of it. It raises many questions.

The Market and the Old Town

The old town around St. Mary’s Church — where Anne Brontë is buried in the churchyard, which adds another strand to Yorkshire’s Brontë geography — sits below the castle headland and has more independent shops and less seafront spectacle than the main drag. There’s a covered market building used for craft and food stalls, and the streets around it are worth walking slowly.

When to go: Late September and October for the best light, empty beaches, and functioning town. June and July for warmth and all the resort apparatus operating. Avoid August school holidays unless crowds are acceptable. The Stephen Joseph Theatre, based in Scarborough, produced much of Alan Ayckbourn’s work and runs a strong season from May to November.