A visit to Whitby

Whitby lies a little way up the coast from Robin Hoods Bay and is a much bigger settlement than the one where we ended our Coast to coast walk.

On the final day of our walk we should have had lovely views down to Whitby and its Abbey but, alas, the weather was not kind and there could have been anything 100m in front of us and we would have missed it.

Today we headed for Whitby to see what we had missed.

Our Sat Nav, a TomTom that I have named Tom, took us along small country lanes for much of the 25km trip to Whitby. We passed through part of the Nothk Yorkshire National Park and its moorlands which evoked memories of trudging through boggy, wet heathland with wet boots. We both decided that we were not in a hurry to repeat the trials and tribulations of our final day walking in the Coast to Coast. Perhaps it will be a little like childbirth where the negatives fade over time and the good bits prevail.

Anyway, Tom took us along an impressive number of very small winding country lanes before we finally reached the A171 and headed north along the coast. We duly arrived at the carpark next to Whitby Abbey.

From Wikipedia: Whitby Abbey is a ruined Benedictine abbey overlooking the North Sea on the East Cliff above Whitby in North Yorkshire, England. It was disestablished during the Dissolution of the Monasteries under the auspices of Henry VIII.

The first monastery was founded in 657 AD and had a checkered history of being sacked and rebuilt. The ruins are impressive. Here are some of my photos.

 The ruins were pretty impressive but we baulked at the entrance price £6.50 each.

Trevor had found a walking tour of Whitby and we duly headed off to see its many offerings, the first of which was the Captain Cook Memorial Museum. James Cook had spent his apprenticeship years in Whitby and, when not at sea, stayed in the house of his master, John Walker. The house where he resided is now a museum in this name.

The pink house on the left hoses the Captain Cook Museum. Note the narrow pedestrian laneway, one of many in Whitby

We did visit the Captain Cook Museum and it was interesting and worthwhile.

Later in our travels we came to the statue erected to Captain Cook. Unfortunately it didn't come out as well as I had hoped.

By the time we left the museum it had started to rain so we opted for a lunch break. By the time we had eaten our fish and chips the rain had cleared and we continued on our meader through the town.

School has gone back. The weather has turned unpleasant and yet there were hundreds of people wandering around the waterfront and milling in the streets. There were oddles of tourist attractions - all those things we associate with the English seaside - penny arcades although I'm sure they expect a lot more than a penny for each each game played, icecream parlours, chocolate fudge shops and the standard souvenier places. Everything that could extract money from the relaxed tourist was in evidence.

Whitby is actually quite a pretty town. Here are some of my views of it.

Harbour entrance

It even has a swing bridge. This bridge separates in the middle and the two halves swing back so that tall shipping can pass up the estuary.

Whitby's swing bridge

Not only is the town riddled with narrow streets it also has many narrow passages between buildings which connect one level to another. The only access to some of the buildings, including residential ones, is via very steep and narrow passages such a this one.

Dominating the town is the church of St Mary's. It sits on a headland above the town quite near the Abbey. The exterior is not pretty.

The churchyard was well populated with headstones.

Unfortunately, many of the headstones have suffered badly and are in a very poor state with the inscriptions erased by the hash coastal climatic conditions.

An example of the many weather damaged headstones

While taking photos of teh Abbey we walked along the clifftop towards Robin Hoods Bay. Here is a sign which reminded us of our final days walk.

We did less than 6 1/2 miles along the clifftop but we did walk along a section of the Clevland Way  on our final leg into Robin Hoods Bay.

As we travelled back in the direction of Scarborough we passed the sign telling us that it was only 2 1/2 miles to Robin Hoods Bay, by the  road yet it took us almost twice that distance to arrive there last Friday because we had taken the route along the top of the cliffs.

After our excursion to Whitby we visited Morrisons, a very large supermarket complex just out of Scarborough, as we needed to supplement the meagres supplies that we had purchased on Saturday at the local little supermarket at one of the villages just down the road from where we are staying. I think that we should have enough food to last us until the end of our stay.