*tumultuous*
Friday, July 10th, 2009by Rach
Scarborough, England
That’s both the history of the castle we visited today and the sea we are parked beside tonight. (Come to think of it, the adjective aptly describes the behaviour of all children in our care today as well….not to mention the adults – if we are to be entirely honest, both of us raised our voices at various smallfry big-enough-to-know-better-fry in the graveyard we were parked in this afternoon too. Hopefully Anne Bronte did not turn in her grave – yes, that would be Charlotte’s little sister. And yes, the graveyard really had been made into a pay-n-display carpark – all the not-so-famous headstones have been removed and are stacked up around the stone walls – bet there was a long church meeting to reach that decision!)
Anyway, the sea. It rolls in, enormous great waves that swallow the black warning flags. Rolls. Rolls. Rolls. We have never seen such waves that do not break until they hit the stone wall holding up the road. Initially it was an eerie sight; so much so that some of the children did not want to leave the vans to go and peer over the wall! But we all ended up leaning, sitting, standing on the wall and marvelling. The more you watched, the less imposing those waves seemed. And the wall did a marvellous job of stopping them – even though it looked like they would just keep rising over!
All that said, we decided to push on around the point to find a less formidable place to sleep. The question is, is it any better? This side the waves are enormous and break in a roaring rush of water. As we ate dinner (inside the van – too cold to sit outside, coz this is English Summer, you know) we watched the waves crash against the concrete barrier beside the road; sometimes the spray reached so high complete houses across the bay were obliterated from view! But somehow it felt more comforting to see the waves break – coz that’s what waves are s’posed to do!
So here we are at the base of the cliff. If we look up we can see Scarborough Castle. See?
It looked much more impressive from up the top this afternoon and the view was spectacular. As ever, the audio tour was top-notch. Favourite snippets include the fact that one of the kings would plant pig-attracting grains on the edges of his fields and then charge the pigs’ owners to retrieve their animals……and the fact that one of the attacking leaders got blown off the cliff by a gust of wind – first of all it took his hat right off his head, then it blew his cape up over his face and he stumbled and fell down the cliff – took him six weeks to recover and renew the attack….and it struck us as significant that this piece of land where we were standing had been occupied since 800BC – that’s nearly 3,000 years…..and as recently as the First World War the stronghold was being attacked, and even in the Second World War it was used as a secret listening post to intercept enemy transmissions. This is a place with some history, and as I mentioned, a tumultuous one. Five times it was besieged – but never taken. Some of the sieges were long-lasting too. And one ended with the front of the keep being blown to pieces – the audio recording was so realistic, the children felt they were right there when it happened. I suppose they were there, right where it happened, just a few hundred years later.
Time on the road: need to check Jboy13’s record!
Distance covered: 35km
rayres