Day Trip to Whitby

Tuesday 16 September Chris and I hopped in our Nissan Juke and drove out of York headed for the coast. The historic and very pretty town of Whitby was our Yorkshire destination. The town has medieval roots, has a glorious harbour with a number of break walls, and it sits on the River Esk. Historically, it has had whaling and herring fleets, and it was here that a young James Cook learned his seacraft doing his apprenticeship and ultimately exploring the Southern Ocean in the Endeavour, built in Whitby. Needless to say, they have a house there where Cook lived while a youth, and a museum dedicated to the great explorer and cartographer.

The trip across the Yorkshire Moors to get there was uneventful but interesting. The moors themselves seemed to me be rough ground with brown vegetation. We paid for a four hour park once there and decided to walk out to the end of one of the break walls to start our exploration. Dotted along the route were all manner of markets, fudge shops, Dracula places, because Bram Stoker set part of his novel Dracula in Whitby, ice-cream, pubs, and cafes. Even a clairvoyant. Seeing the ocean again after not seeing it since staying in Sorrento in Italy was lovely. The sights, the sound, the smells of the ocean, we are so familiar with.

We searched high and low for a spot somewhere to sit down to eat but all the seats in all the pubs and cafes were taken at lunchtime. Whitby was full to overflowing with elderly people and dogs. Eveywhere. We eventually found a fish n chips place across the swing bridge called Mr Chips and sat up against their wall at a little bar. It was delicious but greasy.

Following lunch and before we were overcome with post-prandial chip fatigue, we headed straight for the famous 199 steps and made our way up to the headland that overlooks Whitby and upon which, aside from St Marys Church and the modern museum, are the ruins of Whitby Abbey, a 7th century Cistercian monastery that later became the abbey. The monastery was built twice but the second one was destroyed by Henry VIII in 1540 during the Dissolution of the Monasteries.

The ruins of the abbey were very special. I had not been inside ruins before, but we walked the considerable length of the abbey’s nave ‘inside’ it and looked down the transepts and out through windows with no glass to the ocean. Birds fluttered around here and there in the walls and arches. It felt kinda sad to see it in disrepair given its place as such a centre of learning for hundreds of years, but time has moved on and the abbey has had even to contend with German shelling of the headland during WWII which damaged it extensively.

St Marys Church dates from the year 1110, but most of its interior is from the 18th century. It is strange to the modern eye as it retains old box pews that you step into. They are like corrals. A three storeyed pulpit dominates and a gallery upstairs surrounds. It is quite strange. We went through the museum and found it interesting, but it would have been a treasure trove for people studying the history of the area.

Down the 199 steps again, we headed back to the car and enjoyed a leisurely drive out of the moors back to York. A lovely sunny day that gave us something new of England. Whitby was extremely picturesque and historic and I will remember it fondly.Baca lagi