North Yorkshire – Whitby

We have moved toward the east coast of Yorkshire to the well known town of Whitby.

Whitby is a small old whaling town on the North Sea. But more famous for James Cook having learned his seamanship here and in Fact HMS Endeavour the ship used to explore Australia and New Zealand was built here.

Bram Stoker visited Whitby for a week in 1890. During his time there Stoker was inspired by the local scenery and history, which influenced the setting and characters in Dracula. Notably, he discovered the name “Dracula” while researching at the local library, where he learned about Vlad Tepes, also known as Vlad the Impaler. This pivotal moment helped shape the character of Count Dracula in his novel.

The Cinder track is a 21 mile section of a disused railway that you can use to walk / cycle the coast all the way down to Scarborough

We have our choice of fish & chips shops here in Whitby which we are told we must try because they are the best so we did of course. We had just completed the 199 steps up to the Abbey so all good 🙂

Whitby has surprised us we were expecting a small quaint town by the sea but it is much larger, extremely busy and has that whole seaside holiday spot feel with fairground and seaside shops selling all the same stuff. But once you look past that you can see how lovely it is, especially walking around the old town. When we arrived yesterday the place was heaving – they have a folk festival on in the town, so for today we made sure to get into town early to appreciate it more without the crowds.

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Six miles south of Whitby is the small coast town of Robin Hoods Bay, we took a bus from Whitby. Once there it was quite a climb down and back up again but worth it to get an idea of this old fishing and smuggling town.

At the bottom of the hill we found a small cafe, they only did French press coffee so I had a coke and Mandy had a cup of tea (life’s too short for bad coffee!) BUT they also did an amazing bacon sandwich!

Tomorrow we head further up the coast.