Raising £10,000 For Candlelighters - We're On Our Way!

Well we have made a start - and slightly ahead of when we expected to have enquiries!

This is the power of the internet for you - a family from Filey had a google alert set up for anything containing "Filey" in text, when I wrote about the project and mentioned that we were planning to visit Filey google alerted them and now here we are planning to meet up on Tuesday 7th April - in the childrens Easter holidays.

So if there are any other families with google alerts for Filey, Robin Hoods Bay, Scarborough or Whitby then we are in your area on the 7th April - please email us to arrange an appointment time: sharon@theportraitpeople.co.uk

Filey is actually another of my "special" places although it has become a little commercialised of late. When I was younger we used to spend a week during the summer holidays there every year at a flat in Rutland Street and then laterly in a static caravan mum and dad bought on Collins caravan site. We used to love the walk from the site, across the railway and down the little lane (I forget it's name now) down to the quieter end of the beach by the golf course. I also worked in Filey for a little while whilst I was undertaking a college course in Business Studies/Travel & Tourism. I was sent to the then Hylands Hotel (it's now a retirement home I believe) and used to frequently come back there on weekends when they had functions on and work as a waitress - I've waltzed around their dance floor during "ballroom dancing" weekends a few times as a "young lass"! Not that I can waltz at all - but no-one seemed to notice or mind! I think we made the numbers up for some of the groups there.

Isn't it funny how things turn a full circle? My favourite places to frequent used to be Sterchis for the hand made chocolates and the Brown Room for their lovely fish 'n' chips but now when I take my children to Filey my daughter insists we stop at the little outside cafe at the Cobble Landing and have a mug of hot chocolate with Marshmallows and Flakes. She took me there for mothers day last year! We had a lovely day even if it was a bit on the chilly side on the front.

Whilst I'm on with the reminiscing - one of the memories from my childhood which has never left me is that of watching my dad, asleep in a deck chair on the beach whilst the tide came in around him from the sea wall above him. My mum thought it would be funny to wait and see how long until he woke up! It wasn't until his shoes started to float that he did. There was a crowd on the top watching him. It was funny. Fortunately he took it all in good spirits. The love of Filey has never left him either and he goes every year to the Fisherman's Festival and has frequently won a trophy, he also claims to sing (although we all dispute that since he's tone deaf) in the Filey Fishermans Choir.

Candlelighters registered charity number is: 1045077