Scarborough

For years I had no idea that Scarborough was a real place. I thought it was just imagined for Scarborough Fair. Not only is it real, it has a castle, and thus I stopped by, even though I knew it would be closed. Scarborough is primarily a beach town, so unlike most castles, this one was open on the weekends and closed during the week. The ruin sits atop a quite defensible rock outcropping on a peninsula.

On the walk through the homes up to the castle, I passes the burial place of Anne Brontë in St. Mary's Church, which was built in 1180 CE. I have never read any of Anne Brontë's work, so I didn't feel the disdain that I would have passing by a place significant to her sisters. In high school a friend and I speculated that perhaps Anne, the least read of the three sisters, was actually a good writer, and that by some terrible mistake people ended up reading the detritus like Jane Eyre and (shudder) Wuthering Heights. But I digress. 

The castle was entered by a single narrow stone bridge.

Even though I wasn't able to see the Roman signal tower and look over the steep cliffs down upon the sea, I had a good view in the other direction of the beach town and its promenade. 

Simon and Garfunkel's version of the folk song Scarborough Fair was thoroughly stuck in my head on the whole bus ride to Whitby.