The Sights Of Scarborough

16 July 2020

Scarborough has been swaggering about with its Original Seaside Resort badge for centuries, and it’s easy to see why. Refusing to fade into the past, the town is cocooned between two large bays on the stunning Yorkshire coast. Perched just beneath the North Yorkshire Moors National Park, vast green dales and brooding heaths tumble down to this dramatic coastline. 

With fabulous beaches that have attracted visitors for nearly 400 years, Scarborough takes us back to the golden era of seaside breaks. These days, a troop of technicolour beach huts, ice cream parlours and shellfish stalls add to its coastal-postcard charms, but there is still much more to explore. 

We bet you didn’t know all of these unusual facts about this classic spa town. 

Here’s to you, Mrs Farrar 

Back in't day a local lady named Mrs Farrar was wandering around the foot of the cliffs near the harbour, when she discovered that the natural mineral waters had medicinal benefits! This set the wheels in motion for spa houses to spring up in the 1700s to sell the waters to visitors who were keen to improve their health. And so Scarborough became a well-known resort to ‘take the waters’, bathe in the sea and stick around to enjoy boating and horse riding on the beach. 

The place to be, and be seen 

By the Victorian era, the holiday-resort reputation had well and truly run away with the town, which was now flourishing with more visitors than you could shake a stick (of rock) at! A Victorian tourist guide described this heart-throb of the north as "spread out like an amphitheatre upon a bay...the fashionable South Cliff, with its terraces, walks, and handsome music-hall, is crowded with pleasure seekers from all parts of the Kingdom. The bathing at Scarborough is famous." The town was firmly becoming a place for genteel promenading, with a ‘come for the waters, stay to be seen’ attitude. Later investment saw cliff-scaling tramways and Edwardian pleasure gardens installed in the town. 

Count Dracula’s holiday home

Did you know that Scarborough is just half an hour from Whitby? With its dramatic abbey ruins, windswept coast and eerie church, it provided the perfect backdrop for part of Bram Stoker’s Gothic horror Dracula. The author fell in love with the town and used the ruins and spooky churchyard as settings within his thrilling novel. On our Scarborough breaks we even offer an excursion to explore Whitby’s quirky streets, harbour and of course the atmospheric ruined abbey perched up on the cliffs. 

Are you going to Scarborough Fair?

Like Robson and Jerome, or Batman and Robin, what is Scarborough without its fair? During the Middle Ages the town was a key meeting point for merchants and traders. The tradesmen gathered for a massive six week-long trading event each summer, which was seriously long for a fair even in those days. Vendors and dealers travelled from all over Britain, and even Norway, Denmark, the Baltic and the Byzantine Empire. The traditional folk song Scarborough Fair was penned to celebrate this market, which ran for over four centuries. 

Beano on the beach 

Now here is a unique fact! Scarborough holds the record for creating the World’s Largest Comic Strip!

To celebrate The Beano’s 50th birthday, an exact replica of this popular publication’s front cover was drawn on South Bay beach in June 1988. With coloured sand and vegetable dyes aplenty, it took over six hours to create, and was the masterpiece of over 100 children from local schools. This giant ‘art attack’ measured a stonking 170 x 235 feet - just imagine the trouble that a life-size Dennis the Menace and Gnasher get up to! 

Are you ready to explore stunning scenery fused with brilliant beaches and traditional attractions? Take a trip to the Queen of the Yorkshire coast.