Déjà vu, tramping the yards of Whitby !
This is the daily blog of Alan Davidson who lives in Whitby North Yorkshire. My main hobby is search engine optimisation. I live in Bradford and also Whitby.
My Whitby Holiday Cottage
http://www.endeavourcottage.co.uk/
My CCTV and Security Alarm installation companyhttp://www.adalarms.co.uk/
I am Sir Roger Moore's Web manager, his official site http://www.roger-moore.com/ and at Sir Roger's forum you can ask the man himself a question each month http://www.roger-moore.com/cgi-bin/index.cgi Read more from this authorThey say that nothing worthwhile having in life is easy, so does that mean because good results can be hard to achieve sometimes the end doesn’t justify the means? I don’t think that’s usually the case, if you work hard you usually get an easier lifestyle long-term, it just doesn’t seem like it sometimes when you’re in the midst of your endeavours to achieve a particular goal.
When you’re younger sometimes you mistakenly like to win your challenges to massage your ego and improve your confidence, but one of the few benefits of ageing is you usually get a little bit smarter and this becomes less important. You’ve experienced achieving some particular goal like say a fancy car etc and it becomes apparent that it wasn’t such a big deal anyway and what really makes a difference in your life is the quality of the relationships with people you care about.
So having said that goals are not so important and going to contradict myself by pointing how I’ve been fanatically scrutinising as many cottages in Whitby is possible, particularly last week trying in an effort to try and buy the best one for the money. Goals are still important and you should try to do the best you can, its more about getting a quality results or product and achieving something good which you enjoy another people hopefully they will also.
I wanted to move to Whitby 20 years ago and was gazumped on a house on the Royal Crescent and I’ve always regretted not moving their starting my holiday accommodation extravaganza. But I was lucky enough to be able to buy a cottage in Whitby two and a half years ago, after spending many months watching the properties for sale on the Internet and then visiting as often as possible and walking feverishly around all the available cottages until I found the particular one which ticked most of my boxes. . I wanted to buy one which possessed certain attributes, old world charm, spacious as possible (which is difficult in 
old Whitby) and also had a nice outdoor space or was set in one of the famous Whitby yards.
Success eventually came and I got most of the things I wanted and I’m very happy with http://www.endeavourcottage.co.uk/
But It has backfired on one level, we are “victims of our own success”! The master plan was that even though the cottage is primarily a business, we would use it ourselves whenever it was vacant and we could get there. But the reality is that from literally the very beginning of owning the cottage after its renovation work was completed, it has been almost solidly booked out. This is because of two things, having a good cottage and working hard on the Internet using search engine optimisation to market it.
OK that’s great on one level, but on our three holiday breaks in Whitby last year, we had to stay in alternative accommodation, how crazy is that! The best we’ve been able to do is steal the odd night two between customer bookings, spending most of the time doing maintenance rather than relaxing and enjoying Whitby!
So last year encouraged by the success of the first cottage I was extremely keen to buy one on Cliff Street. It was built in 1662 and is grade 2 listed and is called The Old Bakehouse because that’s exactly what it was many years ago when there was no supermarket to buy your bread and the poor hard-working fishermen didn’t have such luxuries as an oven for baking.
Once again there was a reasonable amount of work renovation work required, but the thing that made this building special was its history and even more importantly the fantastic views from all three floors into the harbour and Whitby Abbey. I’ll actually fell in love with the idea of buying this cottage even though this rosy view of The Bakehouse was not shared by my partner Pauline or her sister Joan who thought the building was gloomy. I think they fail to see how it would change once brought up to date and they kept saying if you look down you could also see the car park of Somerfield’s supermarket, “so what” I kept saying “just look out at the wonderful sea view and the Abbey” anyway unfortunately it wasn’t to be.
Anyway it is time for the Whitby empire to expand so after months of watching properties on Right Move on the Internet and then visiting again as often as possible and walking and looking feverishly again, déjà vu 
There are some very old cottages in Whitby but quite a lot of them are shall we say a little too strong on the old worldly character. They were built as small working Fishermans cottages and definitely not for spacious comfortable holiday accommodation. They can often be found in a very dark little back alleys or with numerous steps climbing up from the harbour of Whitby also can be slightly depressing, in respect of holiday accommodation. Strangely enough one of the nicest cottages I came across this week was in Loggerheads yard on Baxtergate, which was the featured on the guest picture competition which is run by Sheila on http://www.facebook.com/whitbyfans. The only problem was that the old cottage needed everything doing, and wasn’t cheap to buy which is not a good combination!
So my criteria is high but I’m very happy to report that I think I’ve found another gem. The yard in which the cottage is situated is not quite as pretty as my original cottage, which is set in a beautiful old yard with old outhouses opposite, each with their own Belfast sinks where Whitby jet was once worked. But what makes the new cottage special is the interior which is probably the most traditional Fishermans cottage I’ve seen while being tastefully renovated to a high standard and maintaining its original character features. Examples you walk in the kitchen there is the original old six-foot tall cooking range and a good example about the present owner has enhanced the character, he is a member of the Whitby rowing club and so he has used proper rowing oars as hand grips as you go upstairs, quite beautiful
So fingers crossed, let’s hope I don’t get gazumped again !
Endeavour Cottage two-minute stroll from the harbour Whitby Holiday Cottages
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