21 July 2006
I don’t remember ever coming here as a child, but as an adult I’ve certainly appreciated Filey as a seaside destination. On a quiet weekday afternoon, during the heatwave in July 2006, it was the perfect place to be. This wasn’t a walk with a particular route – we just wandered. But thought I’d share some photos and thoughts.
It seemed that there were some rules on the beach about where dogs were allowed and not allowed. Wherever they are allowed they go all giddy and excited and run in and out of the sea in a mad way. When we first discovered the delights of Filey a couple of summers ago, the dogs on the beach were so entertaining that whenever we visit Filey now we look for them. When I think of Filey I think of dogs of all shapes and sizes dashing into the waves and up and down the beach.
As a cat owner, I see this kind of excitability only every now and then, when our cat has a "mad half hour". Dogs seem to be like this all the time, whenever they’re out and about. It’s a great antidote to stress, watching the dogs on Filey beach. It’s particularly nice when you’re not the owner and you haven’t got the responsibility of worrying about where they do their toileting. I didn’t notice any dog do anywhere in Filey – the owners must all be considerate and tidy people, armed with plastic bags and poop scoops.
And of course there are people too. Walking, sunbathing, or flying kites. This young chap was an apparent master of kite-flying. While at the other end of the beach, young ladies were promenading, as they might have done in this resort’s Edwardian heyday. Though these days young ladies show a bit more leg.
Being a serious student of architecture (well, I felt like one – I took my Pevsner guide to the beach with me), I was interested in the buildings and the history of the town. My Pevsner guide didn’t mention these – which appear to be beach huts – but whoever chose the paint and painted them deserves a mention. Those blue touches and the nice calm cream paintwork forms a lovely composition against the green behind and the shingle in front. They’re mainly unoccupied, it seems, but then this is the North Sea coast.
Filey is one of those resorts that developed rapidly after the railways reached it in the mid-19th century, though as early as 1805 it was noted as a rather classy seaside destination. It’s still classy, two hundred years later, which is no mean feat.
In 1801 it had a population of around 500. The railway linking it to York and Hull opened in 1846-7, and by 1851 the population was 1,1511. It must have been a place for discriminating folks, as Charlotte Bronte visited here twice in the mid-19th century.
Its heyday was the period just before the First World War. The Pevsner guide says of Filey: "unlike East Yorkshire’s other seaside towns, it has neither decayed nor become totally commercialized and it has to some extent retained the air of an Edwardian resort."
These ladies were walking along the seafront as we were sitting on one of the many benches. Apart from the style of their clothes, and the tarmac they’re walking on, this could be 100 years ago.
In recent times, Filey’s population has been around 7,000. Nowadays many of its residents depend for their livelihood on the day visitors, like us.
Living in York as I do I know what it’s like to be a resident of a tourist-oriented place. It means some positives, and some negatives. One of the positives is that the local authority has to think about how the place looks, so that it impresses its visitors. Everything here looked clean and well-maintained.
This couple were strolling along the seafront by the railings, with the beach and the waves and the curve of the bay stretching out before them.
The left hand view shows the sandy beach, with a curved wall behind it. The curved part houses a paddling pool at the top, which looked as clean and well-kept as everything else around here. What a brilliant idea to put a paddling pool here, overlooking the bay, so that it isn’t just a place for children to play, but for adults who are supervising them to have a proper view of the beach and the sea.
And if you were going out to sea, you’d need a boat. Here are a couple of handsome examples I spotted earlier, up at the other end of the bay. Ebbing and Flowing, and Morning Mist. In this case we’re not sailing off onto the high seas, but walking up the path from the beach, towards the Crescent, the flowers and the town.
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