Mid-summer in Robin Hood's Bay
Mid summer...the artist's canvas ever changing over Robin Hood's Bay. Hues and heavenly colours of summer evenings as the ghost walk sets off into the sinking of day, into the dimpsie time, the gloaming, the twilight. The magic time.
Tails are bushy, a new group has just arrived, grinning, sheepish, excited, expectant, hushed and unsure of what's to come, looking at me askance.. Children are waiting to be swept away into another world hiding around corners, found in deep caverns, tunnels, bolt holes, alleyways, secret passages and attics. Stories of other lives lived long ago close to shore and far away at sea, siren song of the merfolk, ghost ships, strange entrancements and lucky charms to protect against bad luck and portents of doom; pannier tracks and supernatural landscapes of a wild ancient moor; nature spirits and elementals of forest, valleys, the old ways, trails, trods and lanes.
The other world hides just behind an invisible curtain separating us from this strange modernity. In that world there be pirates, smugglers, witches and witchcraft, clattering magic-a-plenty; hobs, hobthrushes, jack-o-lanterns, banshees, clabbernappers, boggles and boggarts, imps, elves, nisses, faeries, water spirits, barguests, ghosts, poltergeists; if you get my drift.
Mid summer, a dream, lived in a garden spinning in the universe, stories to be told, stories of earth, sea and sky; stories of an ancient village clinging to a cleft in the cliff, tumbling down to the beach, rock pools, big skies, traditional fishing in small cobbles, a tight knit community, wide open welcome to visitors. No atm's, no supermarkets, no chainstores, just the soft summer nights before winter comes again with its wild seas, salt wall of the storm; the weathered, abiding presence of this unique place. I get to run the ghost walk here, to tell some of it's stories. I grew up here. Lucky me.