County Durham

North Yorkshire Coast

Moving north from Whitby we stayed at a farm CL called the Arches near a town called Brotton. This was a peaceful site run by a lovely lady, Jeannie.

Her son was an ex work rally driver for Renault, Peugeot and Ford. and ran a rally driving school here too. There was a lovely walk to the clifftops not far away.

Looking southward down the Yorkshire coast

Beamish Living Museum

We spent a day at the Beamish Living Museum, this place was amazing – it is an open air museum which shows what life was like in the North East of England from 1820 – 1950’s. They have used real historical buildings that have brick by brick been moved to this location to depict what streets and housing was like. There is a colliery, 1820 landscapes including Georgian cottages. An Edwardian high street with all the shops of the day including a school a bank and pub.

A 1940’s farm showing what efforts were undertaken during the war and a 1950’s town and farm showing the advances of televison, cinemas and new housing.

The most interesting area was the colliery, obviously this being a mining area there was a lot of history here. Including seeing how they excavated the coal and the conditions for the miners. In the early 1900’s they would be paid 6p per whole cart of coal – this cart would be weighed and if it was underweight when they sent it up they would be fined 3p. On average a miner would do 10 -12 carts per day.