IN the early 1970s, my dad picked up my baby brother and carried him on foot from Middlesbrough to Great Ayton.

That journey has since become firmly ensconced in Morris family lore.

He never told me why he and Jimmy set out that day, but all seven of his children know exactly where he ended up – Suggitts.

Our haven sits opposite a picturesque waterfall in the tiny village most famous for schooling Captain James Cook.

It’s been there since the 1920s and it’s the place to go if you’d like to spend a summer’s day queuing under a striped awning for homemade ice-cream.

To the Morris clan, it’s our spiritual home.

We’re creatures of habit, us Morrises, and Suggitts suits us well.

One half of the shop sells the sweets you remember from your childhood, weighed out and poured into paper bags by ladies in checked aprons.

That’s the side you get your ice-cream from. Don’t try and get it from the coffee shop side, not even if there’s only you in the shop. You want your ice-cream, you stand to the left, you want your coffee, you stand to the right.

And if you want ice-cream and coffee, you stand to the left and then you stand to the right. Even if there’s only you in.

The coffee shop is hailed as a vintage tearoom by those not in the know – in fact, the décor has been practically unchanged since that first visit.

There are five tables, brown benches attached, and a letter-board menu where the prices may change but the offerings never do. A ham bun or a cheese bun, tea, coffee, scone, cup-a-soup.

Cheese and ham is not an option, to ask would offend. There’s no till, just a battalion of ladies boasting unrivalled mental arithmetic. There’s no toilet either.

We go every weekend, we have done since childhood. In this place outside of time, we gather. Brothers, sisters, nephews, nieces and the patriarch with his newspaper. Boyfriends and girlfriends come and go, some stay.

I have a ham sandwich, tea and crisps. Dad has a ham sandwich, black coffee and midget gems. Our orders never change.

Mr Suggitt leans against the wall, reading a book as his ladies gossip behind the counter, thickly buttering mountains of buns.

We rush there to beat the cyclists who crowd the tables, nursing steaming mugs red-faced and lycra-clad.

We share the space with a cast of characters as much a part of the fabric as we are – the tall, white-haired man who laughs uproariously, holding court with whoever shares his table that day.

He’s Dad’s love-rival. Dad flirts with the counter-staff quietly, but this man’s shameless. Then there’s the devoted husband. He tucks her grey hair behind her ear and holds her hand as he settles her into familiarity. Their love, these days, seems wordless.

I watch them all as undoubtedly, they watch us. Stories as old as time are played out in this little place, week in, week out.

The sights and the sounds never differ as our lives must.

To those scratched tables, we bring it all - if the walls have ears, they’ve heard every family secret we’ve got.

Births, deaths, scandals and little ones kicking their legs and begging to feed the ducks across the road.

We’re onto the third generation of Suggitts-goers now and there’s a part of us all nurtured by that little North Yorkshire coffee shop.

We’ve grown within its walls, a little older with each order, from our awkward teens and gawky goth days to adulthood and babies on our own hips.

Life’s faster now but it slows for Sunday Suggitts. For an hour, we pause it all. Until Dad puts down his paper and abruptly tells us he’s off.

Last week, he looked up from it to say: “You should write a column about this place.”