Don't forget the Vimto
5th Sep 2005, 15:35 GMT
While ironing out the many creases in my flabby, knackered, middle-aged executive's body recently, the in-house masseur at The Mercer Hotel, one of New York's finest, said to me: "Do you remember when you had jet-lag as a kid?" Well, no, I explained, there weren't a lot of time zones crossed between Leeds and the tiny seaside resort of Filey on the North Yorkshire coast. It's perhaps tribute to it's old-world charm that, despite choosing to holiday in hot, distant and often excessively expensive destinations, I still travel regularly from Leeds and London to this lost world of buckets, spades and lifeboats. Nowadays, on a quiet Sunday morning, being thoroughly disrespectful of the speed limit but appreciative of the York bypass, you can do the 75-mile journey in well under 90 minutes. The bulk of that is the meandering country roads that come after the A65 ceases to be driveable.