Our time in Staithes

When I was about ten years old, my family used to open up a cottage in Staithes which was in east Yorkshire, for the season, it belonged to my mothers boss ,so we got a free holiday and then we went at the end of the season to close it down for the winter.
Usually my Grandmother would go and take my brother and myself, we would take a train to Whitby and then travel by service bus the eleven miles to Staithes, it would drop us at the top of the road down to the Village it was very steep and we had to carry our cases down it was about a mile into the village . The cottage was the last one in the village , it was called Mispah, and was built into the cliffs. It was painted white has were most of the houses.and nestled into the cliffs, their were steps on the outside which led to what we would today call a patio,and it was level with the bedroom I slept in,
We loved our time there and got to know the locals really well, it was a fishing village and the local fishermen would go out in an old cobble in all weather's , they would sit right outside our cottage mending their nets . They would also take us out on the boat we would all go including sandy the dog, he would sit at the front loving the spray that was thrown up.
Their was a sea wall about six feet above the sandy beach and we would play jumping off and the local kids would measure how far we'd jumped. Then we would go for walks in the country lanes , or sometimes on the cliffs we could walk for miles and we passed a deserted village and harbour it was called Musgrave. and then we would continue it felt quite eerie we would imagine stories of sailors being lost on the rocks the north sea could see quite violent storms and many of the local fishermen had lost their lives .
The local women wore bonnets which were called the Staithes bonnet a lot of them wore black after losing husband or sons to the sea others wore purple bonnets after a year of mourning had passwd the children would wear white one's has sun bonnets. The village had a very narrow winding road and a footpath would take you to the other side of staithes where the beck flowed and eventually joined the sea , this is where the lifeboat house was, and there were a few cottages and has you walked round the corner you would catch the sea throwing up its spray when the tide was out we would play on the rocks and tried our hand at fishing for tiddlers,
I remember one year my mother and aunty came to visit, and they went to the local public house which was called the cod and Lobster you could stand in front of it and the waves would try and snatch you away, Evidently the public house had been washed away more than once. But i thought my mother was going straight to hell going in there and when they came back they talked of having a Pimm's, of course I had no idea what that was but I think I prayed for my mum to be rescued from this demon drink..
One day I decided i would try and climb the cliffs at the back of the cottage, so I went from the patio and started climbing it didn't look very far but i soon got into difficulty and was hanging on like grim death when some fishermen had seen me and rescued me, after that i was told it was out of bounds.
but they were some of my most memorial times has a child.