Pirates! Scarborough Castle 2022

We woke up to a bit of a grey sky after our first night camping but after a run of good English Heritage fun, we didn’t let that put us off!

We had a quick breakfast then headed out to the bus stop to catch the next bus into Scarborough. We’d not done the bus in this direction before so we jumped out at the station – although in retrospect there was probably a stop closer to the castle.

As we set off on the 15 minute, very uphill, walk to the castle, the heavens opened. “Never mind”, we thought, “we’re seasoned campers and we’ve got all the wet weather gear in the bag”. Hahaha – fools!

By the time we got up to the castle we were already cold, wet, and miserable. We were greeted with a message that there had been some changes to the schedule, but they were hoping some events could still go ahead.

We caught the tail end of “fire power” which was a little underwhelming as the rain prevented a number of the weapons going off. The actors were all in good spirits though, and tried their best to make it entertaining – I can’t help thinking English gun fights must have been pretty pointless if their weapons can’t fire in the rain!

Anyway, we headed into the master gunners house to warm up a little and listen to some songs of pirates and rogues. The duo were wonderful, and (despite Bertie’s face in the photo!) we actually enjoyed listening to their ditties and learning a little about the instruments they played.

We found somewhere propped up against the caslte walls to listen to some puppet tales of famous pirates, with a little shelter and respite from the rain, and a nice hot chocolate from the coffee shed to warm us, we felt prepared to give another event a go.

We enjoyed watching a short drama performance of a mutiny on the bounty (though it was rather different to the film of the same name!) and Bertie, as always, rooted for the bad guys!

We decided not to hang around for anything else, as the rain was getting worse and we were all cold. We wandered down into Scarborough South Bay for a little change of scenery (we usually stick to the quieter North Bay) and soon warmed up in and out of the amusements, and finally finding a nice Brewers Fayre to have some tea before heading back to the train station to catch the bus back to the campsite.