Slack Jawed Babbling

Where better to start than Scarborough? If anywhere represents the physical manifestation of coastal beauty-and-the-beast, it is here. Where wealth meets poverty; rich history clashes with modern veneer and bald fact jostles with bold opinion. The town claims to be the birthplace of the holiday resort and thus provides some solid journey-beginning credentials. That it is also the place of my birth offers some personal grounding. Scarborough sits at the edge of the spare, hauntingly bleak (that's a good thing) North York Moors and opens up to a cinematic view over a wide double-bay where the Norman Castle sitting precariously on the outcrop, divides the two coves. This vista has – seriously – been compared to the Bay of Naples. Locals call the place Scarbados. Gotta love the brass neck. The town is the County’s largest resort, growing from a Spa that threw open its doors to a sulphurous world in the 1660’s. When Restoration-era health tourism was born. Scarborough never looked

  What's it all about? “…A country tended to seep to its coast; it was concentrated there,  deposited against its beaches like the tide-wrack from the sea.  People naturally gravitated to the coast - and they wore fewer clothes there.”     Paul Theroux Joanna Lumley played it for laughs and layered-up warmth; Neil Oliver and Nicholas Crane majored on geology, history and umbrellas; and Paul Theroux did it with irascibility and irritation. I’m going to have a bash too: round Britain’s coastline in bite-size blogs and snaps, cherry-picking the best bits and ignoring the rest. The blogs that follow have been gathered over many years and are stitched together here in a time-shift ramble. The title for the collection is shamelessly nicked from the cheesy light entertainment variety show that ran for five years in the 70’s, broadcast each week in the season from a big top pitched in the car parks and recreation fields of holiday resorts around the country. Seaside Specials were also