22nd January 2015

We’re delighted to introduce a guest post from friend of the Boutique and Breakfast team Matt Needham, a freelance PR consultant based in South Yorkshire. Matt recently enjoyed retracing his childhood footsteps in the North Yorkshire Moors, where he stayed at Eighteen97 in Goathland. Over to you Matt…

Here’s a question for you. What area of the country do you like the most? So many cities, towns, villages, landmarks, national parks, beaches, moors, valleys and roads to choose from. People even have favourite motorways. Yes, really.

I’ve been asked this question a lot over the last few years. It’s hard to answer as I’m not a massive traveller and I’m only just into my thirties so life experiences are limited to an extent. But growing up in South Yorkshire, our annual holiday was always to the North Yorkshire coast, and my first jobs as a northern newshound were in the same location. So my fave place has to be North Yorkshire, doesn’t it?

As a kid, we’d always stay in Filey but spend much of the week away travelling to nearby towns and villages – Scarborough, Whitby, Robin Hood’s Bay, Egton, Goathland. And it’s Goathland where I decided to revisit my childhood recently.

Scouring away on Boutique and Breakfast looking for somewhere to take my girlfriend for a few days, I found Eighteen97 in Goathland. Now it’s at this point I must hold my hands up and say my girlfriend and I are massive Heartbeat fans – and yes, we’re only 31.  We booked it almost immediately and have to say we weren’t disappointed. For those uninitiated, Goathland is the place where Heartbeat was filmed for almost 20 years. The village’s train station is the train station in the Harry Potter films, too.

Owners Fiona and Tim used to run the award-winning Dillons B&B in Whitby before they decided to move into the countryside. They opened in summer 2014 after an £80,000 refurbishment and have just been awarded the five-star rating and a breakfast award from Visit Britain – and there’s no doubt it’ll be followed up by more gongs in 2015.

Tea and cake on arrival gets you in the ‘proper Yorkshire’ mood. Our room, Vivaldi, was perfect and judging by the pictures, the other two rooms are just as good quality. Super soft bedding is complimented by supreme finishing touches, like free Wi-Fi, little bedside snacks, a digital radio with iPod dock, bath robes and a view to die for looking towards the moors. Unfortunately we didn’t see the local deer that often frequents their garden, eating the vegetable patch. But we’ll be back for a second glimpse in the summer.

Breakfast, cooked by Fiona and served by the very funny Tim, is the perfect wake-up call. The menu is huge, and caters for most diets. I’d recommend the full English and the boiled eggs with soldiers. Two nights blissfully away from work will definitely be replicated again at Eighteen97 in the near future. Go visit. Now.

 Matt Needham is a freelance PR consultant, based in South Yorkshire – and his favourite motorway is the M18. Follow Matt on Twitter: @MattNeedhamPR