Fair Scarborough

There is something quite special about mooching around northern Europe’s seaside resorts during the off-season.

Be it the sedate charms of Sellin on the Baltic island of Rügen (with its wooden gabled houses, picket fences and stunning pier), the silent fairground at Portrush on the Irish coast, or the shrapnel spray pounding the promenade at Scarborough on England’s east coast. Yes, we’ve been travelling, so hence the uncommonly long break between our postings here on thiseurope.

Scarborough is a happy throwback to an English coastal life that has not yet slipped into history. The John Bull seaside rock shop with its carnival of confections (aniseed, spearmint and more besides) is as popular today as it was in the heyday of Yorkshire’s coastal resorts in the last century. A wobble of Zimmer frames navigate the cliff-top paths, while down at the harbour late-winter day trippers hoping for seaside daffodils stand in the rain and ponder dressed crab and the garish neon that invites the daring to take a dark ride into the lost underworld.

We dodged the waves and followed in the footsteps of Wilfred Owen who wrote his poem Miners here in the Yorkshire resort. You can still get a luscious plateful of home-made Yorkshire pudding with lashings of mince for less than a fiver at Irving’s, and even on a cold March day the ice cream at Pacitto’s is as good as ever. We skipped the tattoo studio, our courage failed on the ghost train and we couldn’t quite fathom what delights might be hidden in the fantasy forest.

There are a thousand places like Scarborough around the coast of Europe, each with its own parochial appeal. These are wonderful spots, at their best deliciously local communities that seem to exist in a parallel universe – less touched by global currents. They deserve a better press.

This is the eighth in a series of guest postings by Nicky Gardner and Susanne Kries of hidden europe magazine. The latest issue of hidden europe was published earlier this week and features eastern Poland, the Maltese island of Gozo, south London, Ukraine, the Frisian island of Sylt and much more.