The day I first saw Robin Hood’s Bay was through February snow drifts. Driving across the vast Yorkshire Moors towards the coast, snow towering on either side of the road, dwarfing it to a single track, I knew I was heading towards a unique place.
Jiddy Vardy
That first glimpse of grey sea, dark against white land, made time meaningless. This could be any February day in any century. It seems madness now, thinking about that journey, but we kept going. We parked the car before the steep drop of winding road that seemed to disappear amongst roof tops. Edging down the deserted street, we passed ginnels and flights of steps leading off into muddled mazes of cottages, I’d never been to another place like it. Reaching the dock, walking past mounds of empty lobster pots, we were met by a stone causeway that disappeared into the forbidding waves of the North Sea and I knew I had to write about this isolated fishing village.
What kind of people could survive here?
I soon found out. On the shelves of a second hand bookshop on Chapel Street, I discovered a title by a local author. A Rum Do! There were a few pages about a real life female smuggler who’d lived in Robin Hood’s Bay in the 1700s: Jiddy Vardy.
Jiddy was dual heritage and an outsider. She was also brave, intelligent and loyal. I met the person who would be central to my story of smuggling life in the insular community of 18th Century Robin Hood’s Bay.
As always, landscape would play a major role in my work and this outcrop of cottages lying between Whitby and Scarborough, became a central character directing how the inhabitants of my story thought, felt and behaved.
This place isn’t the green rolling Yorkshire Dales of Herriot country or of The Yorkshire Vet. On a February day, it is grit hard and East wind cold. Women here had to be strong, resourceful, resilient and help each other. In this environment, an outsider had to prove herself and Jiddy, with her completely different appearance to everyone else, had her work cut out.
I’ve been back many times since, in all seasons. In summer, it turns into a pretty place full of tourists and flowers and bright colours. The Cleveland Way, with its trudge of walkers, runs through it and along its eroding coastal paths. But I’m glad my first encounter was on a monochrome winter’s day when the silence and cold seeps into your bones and stays with you long after you’ve left. I knew then that Jiddy Vardy was the woman I wanted to write about.
Jiddy Vardy (£7.99) is available to buy on My Book Source, Amazon and all good online outlets and independent bookshops.