Trading Hours

We love Saltburn. It's a lovely place to live. One of the things we love about it is the quality and diversity of the local shops. It's a little short on good restaurants, but there are plenty of nice places to get a coffee, there's a decent deli, a great bakery serving locally baked bread, and an excellent butcher. Our corner shop does a great range of locally sourced produce, too.

So far, so good.

And yet...

And yet, we fall foul of the English disease - as TLOML puts it - of a lack of financial ambition. These local traders would rather have a shorter working day than make more money. So the butcher knocks off sometime around 3pm, or whenever he's done for the day. On Saturdays the independent green grocer closes at 5pm and the gift shop at 4.30pm. Our corner shop shuts at 6pm and isn't open at all on Sundays. Half the shops selling clothes, jewellry and bits and bobs are closed every Monday. And the chippy near us closes at 9pm.

Our favourite chi-chi coffee shop is closed Monday to Friday.

According to TLOML in the US these quirky hours would just never exist, for everyone who runs a store wants to be open for as long as there might be people who want to buy from them.

I'm not sure lack of shopkeeper greed is the whole reason these places are open for such short hours. I think it's actually lack of demand. After all, up here most people eat their dinner by 7pm - what kind of lunatic would want fish and chips after 9pm? And who on earth goes gift shopping, or wants for exotic vegetables, on a Sunday? Only a foolish Londoner, used to being able to spend money 24/7, I suppose.

No, I think its the lack of consumerism which means this town's many lovely shops just aren't terribly available. The good people of this town are spending their time surfing, walking their dogs or sleeping - while idiots like TLOML are saying things like 'let's pop out and buy some bok choi to have in that stir fry' or 'it was S's birthday yesterday, I'm going to go and find her a present'. I wonder if, after a few months of living here, we'll be better organised and less eager to shop at all hours. Or if we'll just become massive internet shoppers instead. In the interest of keeping Saltburn's local traders healthy, I hope its the former.

Apropos of nothing, on streets and their names

Our address in Malibu was '20700 Pacific Coast Highway'. That's right, twenty thousand and seven hundred. You'd be bummed if you were coming to visit and you hit Pacific Coast Highway at, say, number 37, wouldn't you? It's not uncommon for a US street address to begin with such a long number. A scan through my address book reveals a 4010 Rodalite Drive, a 3517 Woodcliff Road and a 5463 Paradise Drive.

These big numbers are partly driven by the fact that the number leaps another 10, or 100 (depending on the city's system) with every block. But it's also because in the US a single road will run for many miles under a single name. Everything really is bigger in America, I suppose. Pacific Coast Highway is a great example, running as it does the length of California, for over 650 miles. Strange to think that we were living, technically, on the same street as someone 8 hours drive north in Mendocino County.

The streets of Saltburn are rather shorter. It's almost as if the Victorian planners had too many ideas for this little town. In addition to the jewel streets - a set of streets running down to the clifftop, called Emerald, Diamond, Ruby, and so on - there are a number of grand-but-small terraces and short 'parades' of houses.
So Victoria Terrace turns into Albion Terrace after just a couple of bends in the road. Glenside would be a decent length but for the fact that a block of it is called Balmoral Terrace, and Windsor Road is interrupted by a single block of Warrior Terrace.

As a result I can't imagine there's a house number higher than, say, 150, anywhere in this town.

This kind of name changing along a street is not uncommon in the UK. After all London's Oxford Street is only so-called for a bit more than a mile, before becoming Bayswater to the West and High Holborn to the East.

At this point I'd like to make a pithy, insightful comment about the significance of such a difference between us Brits and our American cousins. But I'm afraid I've drawn a blank.

I think we just file this one under 'Quirky Transatlantic Differences - About Which No Conclusions May Be Drawn'. Or, to coin the irritatingly popular phrase, "Just sayin'".

The Saltburn Steps

I told you, it's just like a little slice of Los Angeles beach life up here, it really is. Who needs the legendary Santa Monica steps, when we have the Saltburn steps?

The Santa Monica 'stairs' are 189 steep steps running up the side of a sundrenched canyon, overlooking the sparkling Pacific. I haven't counted the Saltburn steps but they too provide a lovely seaview at the top. Unlike the Santa Monica steps, the Saltburn steps are not usually thronged with hardbodies in lycra, stretching ostentiatiously or bounding up them, shiny ponytail swinging with each step. In fact the only other person who appears to run them regularly - according to Strava - is my favourite little sister.

The Santa Monica Steps

The Saltburn Steps

I know all this because I am on a major health kick. The 'just had a baby' excuse won't wash any more, and I miss the ability to wear all the clothes in my wardrobe. I have been not a little shocked by the impact of pregnancy and childbirth on my body, and have found looking in the mirror rather uncomfortable lately. So I'm on it. It's time to shed those pounds before I start shopping in this size.

We're going away for a wedding and a week on a beach in a few days, and that was enough to motivate me to start running up those steps. Sadly I started too late, and won't be back to my former self in time to wear a bikini next week. But if I hit those steps frequently enough when I return, I'll be bikini ready by the time summer hits Saltburn, I hope.

Gems of a bygone age

Saltburn's heyday was in the Victorian age. As the Stockton & Darlington Railway developed, local rail tycoon Henry Pease saw the potential of what was then a sleepy hamlet with a dark smugglers' history. A grand hotel, The Zetland, was built, along with terraces of seaview villas, a pier, and a funicular lift to take day trippers from the station on top of the cliffs down to the beach.

Many of these gems still stand proud in Saltburn.

Saltburn's 'Italian Pleasure Gardens', that mainstay of Victorian bathing resorts

Lady P admires the old school planting

The funicular cliff lift and the pier - treasures of Victorian engineering

The rather grand Zetland Hotel

A sweet Victorian station, originally built to bring day trippers out from smoggy old Middlesbrough

Victorian shopping arcades (this shop is now, usefully, a Boots)

And down by the seaside some old fashioned seaside entertainment prevails, including donkey rides.

Look closely at that last picture and you'll see something else you may have thought was a relic of a bygone age: child labour. We watched this kid picking up the donkeys' poo for a good while last weekend.

I know, amazing what passes for children's entertainment up here, isn't it?

Outdoor Pursuits

TLOML, Lady P and I took a run out to the North Yorkshire Moors at the weekend. It is lambing season so the moor road is lined with cute signs like this one:

 And the fields are full of lambs baaing and shaking their little tails and generally making us both think of roast dinners.

It was a gorgeous sunny day, and we headed to a little village known for its long stretch of daffodil-lined river bank. You pay for your parking in an honesty box and follow the guidance given to take a very pretty walk along flagstone and wooded path.

NCP this aint

Lady P studies the route

Some daffodils

Hordes of people were doing the same thing, some just ambling like TLOML and I, with Lady P in her chariot - others looking a little more serious, with hiking boots on and walking sticks. On our drive we also saw tonnes of mountain bikers, plenty more hikers, and lots of campers too.

It struck me that in some ways this part of England is not so different to Norther California. Both are blessed with wonderful people and a beautiful coastline. You might think that's where the similarity ends. But they are also places where a large chunk of the population enjoy outdoor pursuits.

TLOML and I are the only ones within our little social circle here who don't like to spend our weekends mountain biking, rambling and camping. He does at least surf, I suppose, and I do enjoy a light jog along the seafront. But compared to most people we know here we are rather sedentary.

Just like their crunchy cousins across the pond, the good people of North Yorkshire like to get outdoors.

The North Yorkshire Moors. Mile upon mile of rugged beauty inspiring mountain bikers, hikers and pub lunchers.

I think the biggest difference is that while after a good hearty hike, the people of the Bay Area might enjoy a frozen yoghurt or a quinoa burger, over here they reward themselves with a bacon butty or a slice of cake. If anything could persuade me to cycle up Saltburn Bank, or hike around Blakey Ridge, it's that kind of reward. I'm afraid those healthy Californians are missing a trick.