From Fire to Family
Whitby | Wednesday 12th August 2026
Intro
A genuine fire, a middle-of-the-night evacuation and an abandoned smoky bedroom made for an unusual start to Wednesday.
But within hours the day had transformed completely.
My daughters arrived in Whitby for our two-night stay, followed by enormous milkshake drinks, a gloriously confused phone call from my ex-wife, an unexpected supermarket memorial bench and, eventually, pizza.
From blue lights in the darkness to an ordinary evening with Katie and Zoe, it was a day of extraordinary contrasts.
BLOG
Wednesday began in circumstances I certainly hadn’t anticipated when I went to bed. After a middle-of-the-night fire alarm, an evacuation, and an eventual all-clear from the fire brigade, I returned to my room at the YHA. It turned out there really had been a fire—a bin ablaze in the downstairs ladies’ bathroom. Given that my room sat directly above that corner of the building, returning upstairs wasn’t particularly reassuring. The air carried a heavy smell of smoke, and my asthma began playing up.
Rather than gambling on finding a hotel room in Whitby at one in the morning, I decided to pack everything up. In under ten minutes, both bags were loaded, and I re-established myself in the downstairs TV lounge where the windows were open to the fresh air.
By mid-morning, however, the nighttime drama felt a world away. Leaving the hostel behind, I made my way towards the western side of town to wait for my daughters, Katie and Zoe, who were driving over from Harrogate for a two-night stay. I set up camp on a sofa inside the Whitby Leisure Centre with a cold drink and my luggage beside me. Inevitably, I struck up a conversation with Becca, the receptionist, who told me she had worked there for 18 years and still loved the job.
The girls arrived around 11:45, completely changing the character of the day. After a few days travelling on my own, the solitude gave way to family rhythm. Later in the afternoon, we stopped for drinks—the girls tucked into enormous milkshake drinks served in jars—and enjoyed a delightfully absurd moment when Jo (my ex-wife) rang Zoe’s phone.
I answered, and upon hearing a male voice, Jo first guessed I was Tyler (Zoe’s boyfriend from four years ago), then tried guessing Rhys. “Geoff,” I clarified. Silence. “You know—the Geoff you were married to for thirteen years.” That finally narrowed it down. By 4:00 pm, when Jo called back and realized we were all together in Whitby, her initial confusion had transformed into an indignant, “Why didn’t I get invited?!”
By early evening, we were picking up snacks at the Co-op. Naturally, while the girls were occupied at the till, I managed to spot a memorial bench tucked inside the supermarket near the store leaflets—a wooden bench dedicated to a former colleague named Paul Bradder. While two daughters go shopping for snacks, their father emerges with photographic documentation of local memorial furniture.
I sat outside while the girls ordered takeaway pizzas. Less than twenty-four hours earlier, I’d been standing outside a hostel in the dark watching blue lights and firefighters. Now I was sitting outside in Whitby, waiting for pizza with my daughters. The extraordinary had given way to the wonderfully ordinary—and that was absolutely fine by me.
REFLECTION
Looking back, what stays with me most is the sheer contrast of the day.
It began with smoke, firefighters and uncertainty, yet ended with my daughters, pizza and the comfortable ordinariness of being together.
Somewhere in between came conversations, laughter and even another memorial bench.
Perhaps that is England’s Edge at its most characteristic: not a carefully constructed itinerary, but noticing what happens, who appears and what stories reveal themselves along the way.
Jess Ambrosine