I love where I live but I love to escape it too. I don’t know where my compulsion to flee originates from, but I can recall, aged four, when I lived in Stapleford, Nottinghamshire running to the very edge of the then known universe and touching the Hemlock Stone adjacent to the A6002 and running back without telling my parents. Perhaps being a cop and locking people up encouraged a counter narrative too. Who knows?
Travel has allowed me to flee on a regular basis and I have been lucky to land in several far-flung places. Number crunching my extraordinary journeys, parts one, two and three are testament of my homage to Phileas Fogg. Until recently my preferred mode of escape was to hop on a plane. COVID-19 has temporarily robbed me of that choice yet the urge to abscond was unwilling to hibernate.
As a kid I had fantasied about reviewing the speedway fixtures and taking a helicopter flight to Berwick-upon Tweed, the home of the Berwick Bandits. Why there?
This place was simply a Trivial Pursuit question! Which English football club plays in the Scottish League? Answer: Berwick Rangers. The Town is a smidgen on the side of the English border and for a kid this represented a thrilling oddity!
As the COVID restrictions were lifted my yearning to hit the road remained rampant and Northumberland called my name!
Then a peculiar thing happened. The six-hour road trip seemed like a lifetime. Furthermore, the chance of seeing a Speedway meeting was still in the balance. Apart from a business trip to Newcastle, via a quick return rail journey, I had never explored this part of the United Kingdom, so I hovered over Google maps and plumped for Whitby. Goodness knows why. I had heard of Scarborough and Middlesbrough and since Whitby was halfway between, I decided to dip my toe in the North Sea there.
Little did I know that this jaunt would connect me directly to Captain Cook and Count Dracula!
The renowned British explorer fell in love with the sea and learnt his trade in Whitby. Two of his ships, the ‘Resolution’ and ‘Endeavour,’ were also built there. If this wasn’t enough to drop my jaw to the floor in awe this little dot on the landscape also had another hidden historical gem – the birthplace of Count Dracula!
In 1890 Bram Stoker discovered a book in the local Whitby library that regaled the tales of William Wilkinson, a British consul in Bucharest, in which the account of a 15th-century Romanian prince called Vlad Tepes was vividly described. Impaling his victims on wooden stakes he was also known as Dracula – the ‘son of the dragon’.
The Hammer House of Horror films that scared me shitless as a kid came flooding back, more so as I walked amongst the tombstones that lay in the shadow of the incredibly spooky remains of Whitby Abbey.
As I ate my locally sourced cod and chips from the Magpie Cafe (where else would a Notts County fan eat?) I pondered the connections and smiled. The Dalai Lama had called it right – “The purpose of our lives is to be happy.”
Even though COVID has temporarily robbed me and countless others of happiness it will be beaten, and fish chips will always taste incredible.
Happy days!
© Ian Kirke 2021 & all photographs