A winter spell

From a grassy vantage point in Scarborough’s South Bay, I enjoy a grand view of the town and its splendid setting. White-capped waves roll in from the North Sea onto an expansive beach below the old town, hugging the slopes of Castle Hill – an imposing headland capped by the ruins of a medieval castle.

Scarborough, in North Yorkshire, is credited with having invented seaside tourism, firstly for the supposed health benefits of spa water and later for the beaches and other “diversions”. Yet there are no visitors in sight, which is hardly surprising because it’s winter, a season when the winds, local folk say, can be so lazy they blow straight through you.

Mid-February may seem a strange, even crazy time for a holiday on the coast of northeast England. But I’m beside an information board saying Scarborough was popular with the great 19th-century artist J.M.W. Turner, who was renowned for portraying the “moods of nature”. It was scenes like this that drew him here.

The summer crowds having long departed, this is a fine time to appreciate the wilder side of Scarborough and its surroundings. “Yorkshire” may conjure scenes of grimy industrial towns, especially for those in southern England, yet it is blessed with a great outdoors, one that helped nurture cyclists, rowers and triathletes whose 2012 Olympic tally – if their county had been a country – would have beaten the likes of Jamaica and South Africa.

Unlike in Hong Kong, on even the coldest days there’s warmth indoors, especially in our base, the beachfront Sandcastles apartments. Outside, it is a typical English winter day: just far enough above freezing that there is not a snowflake in sight.