After visiting the abbey or maybe taking a boat trip, if you ask someone who is familiar with it what you should do if you’re visiting Whitby they’ll likely reel off a lengthy list of places you absolutely must eat!
Whitby is a town of fine eateries. From fish and chip shops and Italian restaurants to quaint tea rooms and traditional pubs there’s a bit of everything, but on a recent visit I was rather taken by the pretty cool Whitby Deli, which offers something a bit different.
When you spend as much time driving through the English countryside as I do it’s inevitable that you’re going to end up living off a diet consisting primarily of scone, jam, and cream.
That’s ‘scone’ as ‘bone’ not ‘scone’ as in… ‘bon’ where I come from, by the way!
It is my firm belief that a scone is best served with raspberry jam and clotted cream, with a hearty pot of tea, though I’m sure everyone has their own preferences.
Taphophile is the technical term for someone who has an appreciation for graveyards, and I consider myself something of a taphophile.
On the surface it perhaps seems a somewhat macabre hobby, but it’s often the story of the person buried there that I find more interesting than anything, and visiting their grave is just an interesting way to remember them.
Whitby’s 199 steps are world famous and it’s easy to see why. Walking up or down them is a unique experience, especially to see the abbey at the top or the little shops at the bottom. You might recognise them from the scene in Dracula where the eponymous protagonist leaps from the ship and ascends the steps to the abbey in the form of a great black dog.
Wandering the woods, as I am wont to do of an afternoon, the year before last I discovered the felled remains of a wishing tree, that is, a tree with hundreds of coins embedded in its bark.
Found on woodland trails up and down the UK, the curious custom is the result of superstitious passer-bys who hammer the coins into the trunks with rocks, in the belief that it will bring them good fortune.
‘Secret Beach’ might become something of a series at Wild Wandering Folk as finding them is a new hobby of ours.
Hayburn Wyke is on the North Yorkshire coast and is easily accessible either by walking along the coastal path (right) or by parking at The Hayburn Wyke Country Inn and trudging through a few fields in a seaward direction until you find the trail. We visited in winter so there were very few people around, but I get the impression this place is little known and pretty quiet most of the time anyway.
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