From time to time, Constable Nick must leave his blissful rural beat at Aidensfield to assist his hard-pressed colleagues in busier places. At the height of the holiday season, therefore, he finds himself on patrol in the popular Yorkshire seaside resort of Strensford where a host of new problems await. There are crimes to solve and criminals to arrest, but there are lighter moments. Why, for example, would a lone woman stand on the cliffs and gaze out to sea for two hours on every day of her life; why would a family of children ride donkeys at dawn - while facing backwards, and who owned a dinghy called Daphne which was marooned on the rocks and never claimed? A message in a bottle washed up on the beach suggests a girl is being held hostage, so Nick must urgently find out where and why the bottle entered the sea and then he finds himself helping a film crew shoot scenes in Strensford market place. In another case, a man claims to have witnessed a vicious attack which never took place, then Nick has to search for teenage runaways among the boarding houses of Strensford and manages to embarrass a middle-aged couple but his efforts among the lodgings lead to a clever thief. He finds a party of police officers trying to be anonymous whilst on holiday, helps a magician to entertain at a tea-party and assists in launching the Strensford lifeboat on a life-saving expedition. It all generates yet more constabulary duties for Constable Nick of Aidensfield.