The village in the cleft

By Ruth Ardsley · 6 min read

The geology explains the architecture. This is a cliff coast with occasional breaks in it, and wherever there was a break somebody built a village, stacked down the sides of the gap in whatever space there was. The result is a set of settlements that are almost vertical.

You park at the top. There is no arrangement where you park at the bottom. This catches people out roughly once per family holiday.

Going down

The main street is cobbled, steep and slippery in rain, and it is worth the descent every time. The houses are jammed together with alleys running off between them that go nowhere in particular.

The tide

At the bottom there is usually a scrap of beach and at low water it opens out into a wide scar of flat rock. Check the Yorkshire coble before you walk out onto it. The sea comes back across that flat ground faster than seems reasonable.

Coming back up

It is worse than it looks and everybody stops halfway. There is no shame in it. There are benches.