Monday 23 September 2024: A weekend in Cayton

Cayton Bay in 2018 (© Ian Wordsworth)

I didn’t get around to a lot of work on Friday as I already knew we were on a tight schedule to get to Friday’s camp site. We had to check in at 6pm, and it’s on average about 2 hours away. 

The only job I think I did, aside from my daily declutter, was a book review. What took the time was writing it out, creating the graphic, and sharing it to other sites, such as Medium and Vocal. Vocal published it immediately again. Medium didn’t. I have a checklist on my Trello board to make sure I share the review to places like Amazon, the blog, Goodreads, LinkedIn, Instagram, BlueSky, etc, etc.

We also had the dog with us, who isn’t our dog and we didn’t know how he’d be, either on a long journey or in the van.

When the poet went to collect the van he was really disappointed to see that we’d had mice. Fortunately they’d only chewed at the corners of a couple of the cushions, but even so…I don’t want to devote a lot of time to making new covers for the new cushions when we get them (and I include the settee cushions that convert to the bed) if a mouse is going to eat it all way.

Nor do I wish to kill any mice. I’d far rather fix the cause of the problem which, as far as I can see, is the back doors not closing properly at the bottom and leaving a significant gap. I’m sure they’re not supposed to do that, but I don’t have much experience with Ford Transit vans, let alone 2006 models. But if we must set traps, then I’d far rather they be humane traps and we go and visit every other day to make sure nothing is in there starving to death.

We loaded the van up with clothes, food and dog stuff, and headed off to what we thought was going to be a sunny weekend. We were greeted by a thick sea hoar, which lingered for the entire weekend. 

Ah well, that didn’t deter us from having a good time. On Friday evening we had fish and chips from the site chip shop, which were very nice. On Saturday we walked the coast path to Cayton Bay, which is part of the Cleveland Way long-distance footpath. We had a picnic in the mist on the first bench we saw, only to see buildings a few feet on when we started to walk again, where there was a small shop and toilets. 

I waited here while the poet took the dog down to the beach (it’s a very, very steep path and I’ve done it once already, thanks). There they played ball for a bit and the dog went swimming in the sea right up to his neck. When they came back, a wet and bedraggled dog was still carrying his ball, and a wet and bedraggled poet thought he was about to have a heart attack. (Did I mention it’s a very steep path?) 

Once they’d both recovered, we headed back to the campsite, but this time via the road. When we were almost there, we discovered a farm shop, where we bought local produce for our tea. Everyone slept really well Saturday night, despite our legs aching. Even the dog stayed in his basket for almost the entire night before sneaking up onto the bed with us.

Today’s picture of Cayton Bay is one the poet took when we went before, on a less misty day.

We headed back fairly early on Sunday because we had to get the dog back to his humans, we had to get the van back to the compound, and we had to get to the supermarket before it closed at 4pm. Fortunately, we managed all of the above. And we had pizza for our Sunday dinner! (Nom!) 

We really liked the site. It was a large holiday park with 2 touring fields some distance from the main hub. We would have had terrific sea views too, had it not been so misty. We’ll definitely go back without the dog, as there’s a bus stop at the gate, both ways, with regular bus services to Scarborough and Bridlington. 

This week is a bitty week for me as I’m at the hospital for 3 appointments in the dermatology department. I don’t know if I’ll settle down to much work in between, but we’ll see.

How was your weekend?

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