With Gill being a North-East girl, she decided to take me to Staithes, on the coast just north of Whitby, where tiny fishermen's cottages are clustered around a deep inlet that has been one of the few points of shelter for fishing boats and seafarers on this coast since Viking times.

Staithes' claim to fame is also enhanced by the fact that Captain James Cook, the discoverer of Australia, was apprenticed in the village with a local family prior to his nautical adventures several years later.

Having grown up on the "wrong" side of the Pennines, on the flat Cheshire plain, I was entranced by the rugged moorland and the crashing seas and not least the special quality of light which brought to life the colours of the cottages and the fishing cobbles bobbing in the harbour.

While there, we explored the tiny alleyways and yards and in the local village hall discovered that as well as fishing, Staithes had a more artistic side which centred around a well-established British artists' colony who painted just after the French impressionists around 100 years ago.

The Staithes Group, as they were known, comprised 20 to 30 artists, who painted in the remote village around the time when it was largely cut off from the rest of the UK by the high North York Moors and the rough seas.

At the time, it was an insular, church-going society and it still puzzles me now how the taciturn fishermen and the more bohemian artists got on. Surprisingly, the artists and the fishermen seemed to get along well, however, any artist caught painting on the Sabbath was likely to have fish heads thrown at them.

Among the more famous of these painters was Dame Laura Knight, who was the second woman to be elected to the Royal Academy. Local boys Ernest Higgins Rigg from Bradford and Owen Bowen, who attended Leeds Grammar School and Leeds Art School, were also prominent members.

From the time of my first visit, I was hooked on the Staithes Group of artists and their "impressionist" pictures of everyday fisherfolk mending nets, working the land and going about their daily business.

Over the last 20 or 30 years, the Staithes group, together with other British coastal art colonies such as Newlyn and St Ives in Cornwall appear to be gaining the recognition that these far-sighted and talented artists belatedly deserve and they now form a strong and accurate historical record of the North of England and the hard work upon which the area was founded.

Like many places after the Second World War, the fishing industry in Staithes declined and the fishermen's cottages fell into increasing disrepair. However, Staithes has become popular with holidaymakers seeking to escape the pace of modern life and to enjoy the sensational light and tumbledown cottages that still prevail.

The magic of the area clearly worked on me because my girlfriend has now become my wife and Gill and I visit Staithes as often as we can, seeking to capture that lost spirit of those Victorian painters from 100 years ago.

David Whittaker is managing director of CALA Finance Yorkshire.