The Daily Express Article on Scarborough......

The full Daily Express article on Scarborough:

Scarborough Hits The Right Notes

MANY of us will opt to stay at home for for the summer this year and who can blame us? With the prospect of a long spell of hot weather, the expensive euro and a chance to avoid airport chaos, the decision couldn’t be easier. This week we dedicate our section to UK breaks, starting with STEPHEN McCLARENCE in ‘traditional’ Scarborough.

The sun sparkles on the sea, the gulls soar idly over the waves and, with a quick trumpet fanfare, Britain’s last surviving seaside orchestra launches the first concert of its summer season.

Calling All Workers, the theme tune of the long-running, long-since-axed radio series Music While You Work, wafts cheerily over the audience.

There are 200 or so of them here at the Scarborough Spa Suncourt, mostly mature. They lounge back in their deckchairs, the gentlemen in their straw panamas, the ladies with their parasols, and soak up the sun and the tunes: palm court music, light classical, tracks from the shows. Music while you don’t work.

It’s a scene little changed since Bernard Barley first came to these Scarborough Spa Orchestra concerts, which started in 1912 and were conducted for much of the Sixties, Seventies and Eighties by the legendary Max Jaffa.

“I’ve been coming for 85 years,” says Bernard, from Gainsborough in Lincolnshire.

“I started when I was six and now... [there’s a hint of triumph in his voice] I’m 91!”

What’s the appeal? Across the table June Littlewood, from Scotter, also in Lincolnshire, chips in.

“We love the music, and the orchestra are so friendly,” she says.

“You almost think of them as part of the family.”

Mind you, she’s only been coming for 50 years. Such continuity is rare at the British seaside. Over the past 20 years, resorts have taken a well-publicised hammering from cheap foreign packages.

Hopes are high this year, however, that the recession will encourage more people to take British holidays.

In any case, the seaside is fighting back and nowhere more so than Scarborough. Last month, the resort was declared Top Town in the European Enterprise Awards.

The place has been noticeably spruced up and its regeneration policies have created hundreds of jobs. It’s something to celebrate so, as the orchestra, in their brightly striped blazers, move on to a Kiss Me Kate selection, my wife and I take the cliff lift up to the Esplanade, very much at the resort’s posh end, with its elegant Victorian terraces and crescents.

Down a side street, on a parade of trim, pastel-painted shops, is the Francis Tea Rooms. It’s been here just five years but its Forties atmosphere is so faultlessly recreated that Vera Lynn might stroll in at any moment and order anchovy toast and a pot of proper tea with a proper tea strainer and tongs for the sugar cubes.

Along the parade are bright new galleries and Rosie’s Boudoir, a delightful shop selling vintage clothes and such jewellery as chiffon cocktail dresses, ostrich feather hats and Fifties rosebud earrings.

You could while away your entire holiday up this end of town: the concerts, a play at Alan Ayckbourn’s Stephen Joseph Theatre, or wander on the South Bay Beach.

However, there’s another side to Scarborough, a more bracingly traditional side, and you can take it all in from the end of the Esplanade.

This is one of Britain’s great seaside panoramas. The South Bay sweeps round to the harbour, bobbing with yachts and lined with fish and chip stalls and restaurants (the award-winning Golden Grid is one of the best).

Red-roofed fishermen’s cottages are stacked up the hill to the medieval castle and a street called Paradise.

Nearby is the Leeds Arms, a real-ale pub with an engaging seafaring atmosphere and lots of pictures of small men holding large fish.

All along the sands on this sunny morning, people have staked out their territory with beach towels and windbreaks.

Children play Frisbee. Parents paddle tentatively; this is the North Sea after all. Donkeys stand like statues. We walk down the main street, resisting the tattooist and the palmist who urges passers-by to give her a visit and “get to know your worries”.

Instead, we have chocolate milkshakes at the Harbour Bar, a busy ice-cream parlour bright with custard-yellow melamine and a multi-mirrored Fifties atmosphere.

The harbour area is heaving, so we catch a breezy open-top bus round to the North Bay, a rather more “select” part of town centring on Peasholm Park.

Curiously, the park seems to have taken its theme from willow pattern china, with pagodas and Chinese lanterns and dragon-style pedalos on the lake.

In a glass summer house on an island in the middle, an organist is just ending a Glenn Miller medley and there’s a ripple of applause. Foreign holidays would have their work cut out to be this surreal. I make a note of a forthcoming talk on “Road Verges of the North York Moors”.

Back at the Spa Suncourt, the 10-strong orchestra is coming to the end of its concert (there are 10 a week scheduled over the next 14 weeks).

One or two in the audience have mastered the art of doing the crossword while tapping out the rhythm of the music (which is sometimes counterpointed with the rhythm of the splashing waves).

A South Pacific selection climaxes with Some Enchanted Evening and, goodness me, it’s time for lunch.

My wife reminds me of a trip to Australia nearly 20 years ago. We were trying to put up a tent in the sun-baked Outback and it was all getting a bit tiresome.

I threw down the tent pegs and shouted: “I wish I was in Scarborough!” And I do now.

To book a fantastic holiday at The Sands luxury self catering please call 01723 364714 or use our hotel on-line booking system.

Cheers

Web Team 

Categories: latest-news | 2009