By the book

Writers have long been inspired by Yorkshire’s coast. We dip into their pages...

- Janet Deacon

At the time of writing this piece, the country is still in some degree of lockdown, although there are definite glimmers of light at the end of what has sometimes felt like a very long, dark tunnel.

We hope it won’t be long before you can safely join us again on the Yorkshire coast – although, of course, we strongly recommend that you listen to, and abide by, current government guidelines on travel.

In the meantime, we’ve pulled together some of our favorite quotes about the coast in the hope they’ll help you to dream now, and discover later.

Novelist AS Byatt is so fond of the Yorkshire coast that she set a large part of one of her most famous books, Possession, here, mainly in Whitby and that mecca for fossil-hunters, Boggle Hole. But we’re particularly fond of her description of Filey in a short story called Sea Story:

‘…a fishing town with a perfect sweep of pale golden beach, crumbling grassy cliffs, and the unique Filey Brigg, a mixture of many rocks, beginning at Carr Naze, and stretching out in a long peninsula into the North Sea, full of rock pools and rivulets, harsh and tempting at once.’

Doesn’t that set you itching to grab your bucket and shrimp net and go hunting for tiny crabs and gem-like sea anemones?

But if wind-blown walks are more your thing, here’s Victorian writer Charlotte Brontë on Filey: