Captain Cook, Whitby and Scarborough...(Saturday, 9th April)

Having decided we'd go across to the east coast and see Whitby, the day turned out to be a bit of a disappointment. This was one of those gaps of days in our itinerary, where we hadn't booked ahead, and we realised that it was a Saturday.

We left Hull early enough to beat the Saturday traffic, but on getting to Scarborough, we were faced with one of those narrow coastal resort-everything-crammed-on-the-seafront resort type of towns. It is very pretty, but getting parking is the usual problem so we zoomed up into a multi-storey, and went for a walk. We had put our name on a waiting list for any cancellations at the newish Premier Inn, but that hadn't happened by the time we thought of leaving.

Scarborough has it all, donkey rides on the beach, fun parlours (8), cafes, tea rooms, and a very old clifftop-to-beach tramway which creaks and rattles for all its 5 minute journey, and costs 70p each way! Standing atop this scene is the Grand Hotel, probably Victorian (?), and one of the biggest, ugliest buildings of its kind, and totally dominating all around. It must have been heaven in its day, but is gross now.

walkway down to Scarborough beach

 Having gone past the allotted time we'd allowed to hear about cancellations, we moved on to Whitby. Also not a good day to do so, and everyone by then was out for a day at the seaside!! Parking was even worse, but we ended up on West Cliff, which was a good idea in the end as it allowed us to walk along the flat part, and see down to the ocean and the town. Whitby is very popular, for many reasons, and the ruined castle on the hill was used (I think) in the Coppola Dracula movie.

This was also not going to be a good place to try and get accomodation, as every place we passed showed No Vacancy signs. Yet another small plan gone wrong, but never daunted, we decided to move on to Darlington, where we knew they had a Premier Inn. On the way back to the car we passed two men, one of whom was laughing a lot. It appeared his mate had been successfully "bombed" by a large gull, and he'd copped the lot, all over his nice black leather jacket and in his hair. Lee gave him a couple of tissues to help him clean up.

Whitby inner harbour and part of town

Breakwater and beach

 (Haven't worked out how to arrange these photo's any better, so the spacing is not good.

Decided I could do a bit more posting after all, as we have this room until 11.00am (Oban), and they have free wi-fi, so why not?)

The Castle (Abbey?)