Whitby and Robin Hood’s Bay – Part 1 Whitby

Did you know that the North Yorkshire coast is also known as the Dinosaur coast? And that there is a village where in the past pirates used to live? I’m talking about Whitby and its neighbour village Robin Hood’s Bay. 

These two villages, both overlooking the North Sea, are famous for their history, seafood, fossils, pirates and for being perfect destinations for a little gateway. As Italian born and raised near the sea I was intrigued to visit a British seaside town and these two villages are at just less than three hours away from Manchester.

After leaving Manchester we drove through Yorkshire and its magnificent landscapes; just before reaching Whitby we drove trough the North York Moors, an upland area that contains one of the largest expanses of heather moorland in the United Kingdom [The area was designed as a National Park in 1952] and we’ve been very lucky to admire the landscape covered in fog just before the sunset and, if you don’t know, the combination between fog and sunset in spring creates an astonishing view. We stayed in a victorian terraced guest house in Whitby just a few meters away from the sea and watching the sun going down into the water was just the perfect welcome.

The next morning we went to explore the centre of Whitby. The old town is characterised by narrow streets, shops, cafes, fish & chips and lobster & crab restaurants as fishing and crab hunting made this city very famous. I personally love visiting seaside towns, there is salt smell everywhere, seagulls make a lot of noise (watch out at your food!), the port is always very charming, there are sailors at work, a mass of fishing boats, ropes and various equipment, you’ll see a lot of crab traps in Whitby! And when there is low tide there new many areas and spots that you can explore.

But this city is not popular just for lobster and crab, the North Yorkshire coasts is also known as the Dinosaur Coast for all the fossil findings on the rocky beaches along the coast and apparently finding a fossil seems to be so frequent that attracts a lot of collectors. Although is very common for people just go on the sites and throw rocks against rocks to broke them in half and search for fossils (we saw with our eyes people hammering the cliff) I personally found this practice a vandalic act if not made for scientific interest; what is naturally part of the landscape should be left there. That’s why I won’t give further details about this topic but, if you want to reach the site for other interest I can say it’s definitely worth a visit during the low tide.

Typical of the North Yorkshire coast is also the Jet stone. Fossilised tree wood from the Jurassic period, jet stones are loved today like in the past, Romans used to collect it and send it to cities like York to transform it into jewellery. Today Whitby is full of jewellery shops and artisans who works the stone to craft jewels at a very high cost; walking into the elder alleys you will be surrounded by jewellery shops, they are in every corner, and find something affordable will be a hard task.

As food lovers, during the four days we stayed there we had to try the local cousin but, I must say, we probably fell into some tourist trap and not everything we ate was as good as we expected. We ended in a fish and chips restaurant, and we should have understood from our first step into the local that the oil used for fry did had better days.The Fisherman’s Wife did not (completely) disappoint our expectations, lobster was good, but I sadly discovered that Brits love to combine melted cheese and fish and I’m not really a fan (just my opinion). We had though a fantastic dinner at Pizza West where we discovered the perfect salad combination: burrata, tomatoes, strawberries and mint. Simply heaven. We repeated that dish at home several times!. After dinner we’ve been blessed by another astonishing sunset. Whitby has the particular characteristic to transform itself in a completely pink city during sunset. The pink tones of the sky are reflected into the surface of the sea and on the classic white houses along the coast. If you need of a place to breathe, relax, think and have long walks, then Whitby is the perfect place; you can walk the coastline from north to south down into the sandy beach or up to the grassy cliff.

What leaves me astonished every time is the fearless nature of Brits against cold and wind; we were walking alongside the beach with our jackets and hoodies while kids were having fun into the water.

But the main reason we choose this area of Yorkshire was not for taking a bath, rather, for the ancient village of Robin Hood’s Bay.

Part 2 incoming