Once they’d reached Scarborough, the sat-nav directed them off the A64 and onto the A171, heading north through the North York Moors National Park.
Just past Fylingdales, they turned off and followed sat-nav directions towards the coast and Whitburn-on-Sea. The open moor suddenly turned into a wide valley resembling a book laid open on a table, the mouth of the valley spreading out to form Whitburn Bay. A blunt headland called Whitsunday Rocks nosed out into the North Sea and the town was a surrounded by high cliffs and rolling moorlands.
The Victorian railway magnate, Sir Edmund Vane, had envisaged Whitburn-on-Sea as a resort for the ‘nouveau riche’ of Sheffield, Leeds and Bradford. Whitburn did enjoy some initial success, but with the coming of cheap holidays in Spain and unable t
