Anna Long Legs and I spent a white Christmas with her father, Steve, and his partner, Jayne , at their rambling house in Felixkirk, a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it hamlet, just outside Thirsk, on the edge of the North York Moors.
It was great to be back in big, gorgeous Yorrrr-kshire.
Its natural beauty still has the power to leave me slack-jawed, as does the narkiness of some of the natives. When I asked one waitress for extra condiments she made me feel like I had violated her terminally ill mother in the most disgusting fashion imaginable. Still it made a refreshing change from the effusively chummy bar staff you get in Brighton and Hove. Ask for a pint of London Pride down here and all of a sudden you’re swapping mobile numbers. It can be a bit much.
On the day after Boxing Day we headed to Whitby and Robin Hood’s Bay, to give Anna, who has a fixation with the sea, her first taste of a northern coastline. The first half of the journey was pleasant but unremarkable. The second half, when we left the Scarborough road at Pickering and cut north through the heart of the moors, took us through one of the most impressive landscapes in England.
The North York Moors is awesome and – under mordant, cloud-bruised skies – exudes a terrifying indifference. England’s third biggest national park is the closest thing we have in this country to real wilderness. And it’s hundreds of miles away – literally and metaphorically – from the polite, chalk-bitten folds of the South Downs which form the backdrop to my life on the Sussex Coast. I realise I’ve changed a bit, but…ee by ‘eck.
James Lancaster 