Stepping out of Scarborough train station into the warm sea air, Barbara Hunt and her husband, Maurice, felt immediately at home. It was their first visit to the Yorkshire coast, but the climate was similar to that in their native Sydney in summer.
The retirees, on a five-week visit to the UK, were rather perplexed by the country’s response to the heatwave. “It’s part of life in Australia but here it’s panic stations,” said Maurice, 79. “We find it a bit over the top really.”
The Hunts had found themselves on one of the few trains arriving into Scarborough on Monday after National Rail advised customers to travel only if absolutely necessary.
While large parts of Britain baked in temperatures in the mid to high 30s celsius, Scarborough stayed slightly cooler. True to its history as one of Britain’s first spa resorts, on Monday it provided a welcome retreat for people who live in sweltering towns and cities.
Warmer weather brings more tourists but there was little celebration among the business owners who rely on their money. “These are extremes and I would prefer if these type of temperatures were not around,” said John Senior, who has three restaurants in the town. “It’s a sign of severe global warming and it’s not really a safe environment.”
The Conservative-controlled Scarborough borough council was one of the first local authorities to declare a climate emergency, in 2019. An electric bin lorry began touring the town this week as part of its drive to become carbon neutral by 2030.
Senior, the vice-chair of the town’s tourism advisory board, said the industry would need to “reset ourselves” to handle hotter days, perhaps by improving building insulation or installing cooling stations as seen in hotter climates.
But it was a global emergency that called for world leaders to step in, he added. “This is a worldwide crisis and it requires some guts and it’s going to be tough.”
Global temperatures were falling when Scarborough crowned itself Britain’s first seaside resort in the mid 17th century, in the middle of the little ice age. The world has warmed by about 1.1C since the latter half of the 18th century, most of that increase coming since 1975, when the Costa del Sol began replacing Scarborough as the holiday destination of choice for sun-starved Britons.
Perched on a shaded bench overlooking a busy South Bay, Doreen Edmands, 68, said the record temperatures were a wake-up call to the climate emergency. “Look at the situation in Australia,” she said, referencing the drought and wildfires that engulfed large parts of the country in 2020. “It’s terrifying. What future do they have? Some of it will become quite uninhabitable.”
Her husband, Peter Edmands, 87, said he hoped people now realised that the climate crisis was real. “I’ve been worrying about it since the 60s and it’s coming home to roost now,” he said.
Jen Laffan, 26, a lifeguard with the Royal National Lifeboat Institution (RNLI), said she was braced for another extremely busy summer as more people took domestic holidays owing to a combination of airport disruption and the cost of living squeeze.
By lunchtime on Monday it had been mercifully quiet for her team. Last summer RNLI lifeguards recorded 1,833 incidents around north-east England.
Casting a watchful eye over the roughly 1,500 people on North Bay, Laffan said the crowds would start to arrive next week when schools break up for summer. “South Bay will be chocka. We’ve already had some major water rescues [this year] and with the warm weather and people choosing to staycation, it’s busy.”
While some schools closed due to the heat, others went to the beach. Some of the children of Littleworth Grange primary school in Barnsley were treated to a day trip to Scarborough on their penultimate day of term.
Their teacher, Megan Lord, made sure the group of 53 year 6 pupils were lathered in sun cream as they built sandcastles in the sun. “It’s about eight degrees cooler here than it was in Barnsley,” said Lord, 25. “Being in school would’ve been difficult, and it’s a treat they need after three years of disruption.”
