“AT this season, when every medical man is seeking fresh air for himself and his family or is being driven to his wits’ ends to find suitable country quarters for fastidious patients, we may perhaps advantageously call attention to a new watering place in the north of Yorkshire: Saltburn by the sea,” reported the medical magazine The Lancet 150 years ago this month.

Saltburn had been founded just four years earlier by Darlington industrialist, Henry Pease, as a railway tourist resort, and so this must be one of its first reviews.

In 1865, the medical reporter described Saltburn as being reached through “the busy ironworking district which surrounds Middlesbrough on Tees”. It would be a great tragedy if he were to return next year and find no active sign of the industry that forged the area.

He continued: “Far beyond the reach of smoke, however, Saltburn, or at least as much of it as is finished, is delightfully placed upon lofty cliffs facing the German Ocean, and overlooking a little bay, the even sands of which extend to Redcar, more populous town, five miles distant.”

Last weekend, on what I thought might be the last day of the year on which wearing shorts on the beach would be possible, I followed in the footsteps of the medical reporter for the benefit of my health.

I imagine the medical man had come up by train – the engine would have pulled him right into the Zetland Hotel which, he noted, was just “eight hours of railway travelling” from London. Today, it is nearly an hour’s railway travelling from Darlington, so I went by car. I stood on those even sands and looked back to the eastern end of the bay at the dark, brooding Huntcliff. On the gentle, sunlit undulations on its top, a farmer was packing his straw into circular bales which, from a distance, looked as if they were about to roll off and crash onto the fossil hunters below who were chiselling at the fallen rocks at the cliff foot.

Oystercatchers shrieked as they probed with their long orange beaks in the shallows, but only the surfers were brave enough to venture beyond the breakers.

The Lancet report continued: “Owing to its northern position, Saltburn possesses all those bracing qualities of climate which have rendered the Yorkshire watering places so popular, and in addition, owing to the high hills placed on its eastern side, it is protected from those cutting winds which proved so trying to the invalid.

“It possesses also in its picturesque glen a sheltered and choice sanatorium where the cold winds never penetrate, and where even in mid winter the atmosphere is both warm and moist. Thus even in the autumn months, the invalid or valetudinarian will be able to enjoy open air exercise and amusement.”

I’m not sure the amusement the medical man recommended his valetudinarian – a person not in robust health – included the tuppenny coin drops and one-armed bandits in the pierhead amusements, but as I sat contentedly on a bench on the pier – not built until four years after his visit – I had to agree that even in autumnal mid-September, the atmosphere was warm enough for shorts.

I emptied my plastic tray over the pier rail and soon, out of nowhere, there were gulls of all sizes scrapping over my scraps and scraping the sand clean. I wonder if an 1860s medical man recommended that a huge portion of deep fried fish and chips, smothered in salt, lathered in ketchup and finished with curry sauce was beneficial for the health of his fastidious patients?