Off to North Yorkshire. Or make that mid Yorkshire. About as far from the coast as you can get…

Whatever, it was as perfect as possible with a jetlagged one year old and an agenda based on childhood memories.

It was the perfect antidote to a weekend of kiddie raving at Camp Bestival. Three days in the Yorkshire wilds with Tom’s mother, brother and young family over from Oz. It couldn’t have been more wholesome, and with two little little ones to contend with, it was a fair reminder how far my own two have come.

Tom’s done a lot of driving this holiday, but the three hour schlep north went without incident save a service stop en route, although Tom’s mother’s ancient sat nav took their car a rather roundabout way. We arrived at Tom’s aunt Joni’s smallholding for tea, Victoria sponge, fresh berries and honey from their considerable fruit and vegetable patch, chickens clucking, bees buzzing round hives and brown eared spaniels nosing round. Salutations complete, we promised a barbeque the following day and headed off to the country cottage Tom had hired on Airbnb.

We arrived tired and slightly cranky to a quaintly ramshackle Victorian redbrick homestead in Masham, near Ripon, a six bedroom building that was once a fever hospital, now modernised to incorporate a large, well appointed kitchen, living room with grand piano, three double rooms including large en suite master bedroom and (much smaller) second bedroom, a bunk bed and futon room for overspill, plus two charmingly decorated kids’ rooms – one space themed, the other, a Harry Potter inspired wonderland. Both our two were taken with the ‘space room’, which had its own bathroom attached, and a little secret passageway leading to the Harry Potter room, taken by Tom’s mum Carol, while Tom’s brothers’ family took over the master bedroom and futon room, leaving Tom and I with the slightly disappointingly small second bedroom, with its rather squeaky rolly mattress and compact shower cubicle. But never mind, there was no time for any of that, and in any case, the garden and surroundings were so lovely, we hardly needed to be indoors at all.

Outside was a green yard complete with tumbledown trampoline, slide, swing and chickens that flocked to the door in hope of feeding every time it opened – enough to keep the kids entertained; while out the front a sundrenched terrace filled with foxgloves, snap dragons, chives and wild flowers offered a cobble of tables and chairs, enough for the lot of us – and spare to host a barbeque on the Saturday night with Tom’s aunt and partner joining us with fresh caught trout, hand foraged Eton mess and local sausages from Masham butchers. This followed a dip in the local lakes of which there were several within tramping distance, alongside tiddler-filled streams with stepping stone dams, to be caught with nets found in the outhouse where an ancient waterwheel stood stationary, and jam jarred and examined before being thrown back.

The previous day was a blur. I’d got a bit narky at nightfall on arrival day, after a couple of glasses of rosé and general knackerdness left over from sweaty sleepless nights following Camp Bestival, when Tom realised we were still more than an hour’s drive from my childhood holiday haunts of Whitby, Goathland, the moors and Flamingo Land. After a solid three and a half hour drive from London, no one was much in the mood for another car journey, but I was determined to show my children the places that had held such magic for me when I was their age. Duly, having woken up late on the first day, ear plugged and masked to avoid getting woken by the cries of a one year old down the hall, we piled back into the car with a plan to stop for lunch en route somewhere twee and dry stonewalled.  After a beautiful drive through Rydale, we stopped in Helmsley, a picture perfect market town, complete with castle ruins, local chutney stall and delicatessen serving rustic bread and farm cheeses, plus an assortment of pottery, trinkets and quality ice creams. We pulled together a rough picnic of pork pies, fresh raspberries, bread and cheese and headed to the Walled Garden to stretch our legs and enjoy a rustic feast eaten off brown paper bags and a picnic table.

The next leg off the journey, across the moors, was picturesque enough save for Tom’s bro forgetting his infant son’s dummy, leading to multiple stops while he near choked himself in abject rage. By the time we got to Robin Hood’s Bay, they’d detoured to the local Sainsbury’s, so I took the kids down the steep  main road down to the pretty sea front where we stopped at the charming sweet shop I last frequented as a minor to stock up on cola bottles and gob stoppers, and waited in the late afternoon sun by an assortment of beached vessels and the local pub for Tom to park the car and join us.

We spent two hours amid the tidal rock pools where once my father made sandcastles, supping halves of shandy while the kids dug holes with their tops off, before making the climb back up to the cliff top where Tom’s brother Rob was waiting, defeated, with his kids now perfectly content and playing on swings at the playground.

It was only a further ten minutes to Whitby, home of childhood memories of sucking on aniseed root and carob, amid the salty tang of this quintessentially British seaside port, where amusements compete with cliff top chintz and brightly coloured rock, where the abbey ruins sit mournfully atop, adding a dash of mysticism to the heady seaside mix.

We headed straight for Trenchers, another of Dad’s favourite haunts, where he’d proudly take the family – nanny and granddad, cousins, kids – and treat us all to a slap up fish feast we could never manage, and get cross with us for wanting ice cream afters. There was a poignancy in coming back – unchanged, right down to the polished marble counters and retro 80s decor,  full tea service accompanying every plate. As always it was busy, so we squeezed, eight of us, onto a booth made for six, where my children, with their young cousin, attempted to recreate the frustration my father must have felt, by refusing to sit still and eating only a fraction of their plate. I drank multiple cups of tea and ordered two starters of crab and scampi, all accompanied by a salad garnish and a slice of thickly buttered bread. The others’ fish – line caught, local – was hot, thick flaked and perfect, mushy peas, gravy for the chips. Delicious.

But tired of joggling a fractious baby, the others departed, having seen nothing of Whitby but the inside of the restaurant. We consoled ourselves with Knickerbocker glories, then took a walk to the East Cliff where we took snaps of the kids in front of candy stores and bought them crystals just as I had been by my father.

We walked further than we intended, up the 199 steps to the Abbey’s shadow, where Jonah told us he remembered it from a previous life where he’d bombed it with the German fleet in the Great War. We looked askancet, scoffing at his historical insight, but caught in the mysterious aura surrounding the tortured gothic arches dating from the 600 or so AD, half belieing him. When we regained signal, a Google search told us he was right. It had been bombed, though from whence he knew it, I don’t know. I also learned that my fate had been sealed in another, unrelated, direction, which left me winded enough to forget about arcades, but secretly pleased enough to rest easy for the dramatic sundown lit journey back across the moors to the old fever hospital, thinking about the ruins of my past and making positive plans for the future.

By Sunday, and with ten hours’ sleep aided by pink fizz and grass fed meats, we spent the morning packing and encouraging the children off their devices for one last turn on the trampoline, one last feed of the chickens, with whom I’d become quite taken. I only wish all fowl could be so happy.

Determined to make the most of the last day, we took our leave of family and headed – amid some voices of dissent from the back seat to the National Trust maintained Brimham Rocks an awe inspiring free to enter natural rock formation that soon had the kids squealing in delight, daring each other to climb further and stay longer – quite the best value attraction in the whole region.

We paid only for parking and an ice cream after, and then keen to squeeze in Harrogate and Betty’s Tea Rooms, as well as pick up some desperately needed new t-shirts for Jonah from Debenhams, we piled back in the car for one last hurrah, but a long queue and white flour inspired hyperglycaemia beckoned, fuelling my carsickness for at least the first half of the long journey home. So, if you want my review of Betty’s, a tourist trap relic of a bygone era, suffice it to say: the waitress muddled our order. My daughter is very patient when cake is on its way and one should definitely never eat more than one half of a scone with jam and clotted cream. Followed by raspberry macaroon.