After the murky weather of the previous day, Monday couldn’t have been more different. It was nice, warm and sunny so we decided to do a circular coastal walk, from Ravenscar to Robins Hood Bay.

We parked on the road by The National Trust – Ravenscar Visitor Centre. We arrived at 10am and there was plenty of parking available. It’s a picturesque walk, following the Cleveland Way into Robin Hoods Bay, with the bonus of seeing North sea seals popping their heads out of the water to look inshore from time to time.

We made good time on excellent well marked paths and arrived at Robin Hoods Bay for lunch time – a good excuse for a bag of chips. It’s a quaint little village but, after a quick look around we made our way back, inland, to join the Cinder track and return to Ravenscar. This part of the walk meanders through open countryside and woodland.

If your in the area and like a gentle 10 mile hike, with lovely scenery, it’s a great route. I found the trail we followed on the Outdooractive App with no problem. It was the same as the route in the OS Pathfinder book. There’s a much more detailed blog on this walk here.

Whitby

We decided to have a break from hiking on Tuesday and drove to Whtiby, which was about 10 miles away. Whitby is a picturesque, working, seaside town/fishing port on the North Yorkshire coast. It’s really popular and can get very crowded in the summer. I was hoping that being September it might by quieter, however it was still busy.

The town is also associated with Count Dracula. A visit to Whitby by Bram Stoker in 1890 provided him with some of the locations, used in his gothic novel, and the name for his famous vampire. There’s more on that here.

Because of the Vampire link the town is popular with Goths and holds two Goth Weekend Events every year. I’d love to be around to photograph that sometime. We did see a few Goths walking around the streets whilst we were there. There’s also a few Goth shops, selling Goth and Steam Punk attire and other interesting stuff.

Our Air BnB host had told us to park at Whitby Abbey, a former Monastery, that sits on a hill overlooking the town. We parked with no problems in a reasonably priced public Pay and Display car park behind the Abbey. From there it’s a short walk, down 199 steep steps, into the town. The steps are known, funnily enough, as the ‘199 Steps’

The roads on this side of harbour are very narrow and lined with nice cafes and tasteful shops. It was busy with tourists, but we found it easy to find a cafe to stop at for a coffee and cake. We spent the rest of the morning wandering around the town before taking a stroll out to the end of a very windy North Sea pier.

We spent a pleasant few hours wandering the streets and left mid afternoon. It really is a lovely seaside town without too many of the usual shops filled with tat. Well worth a visit.

All images: ©Stephen Hyde 2007-2025 – All rights reserved.