Yorkshire July 2022 - part 2

Please excuse the absurd lateness of this post, 11 months after the event. I wrote most of it shortly after the trip, expanding on notes I'd made during it. But there were a few things I couldn't quite remember, or was finding it difficult to translate photos from a walk into words, and I'm a perfectionist so just ended up not finishing it, till now. If you wish, you can remind yourself of the first part of the trip here: Yorkshire July 2022 - part 1.

Monday 11th

We checked out of the B&B and hauled our backpacking rucksacks to the Yorkshire establishment Betty's for when their Cafe Tea Rooms opened at 9am. Dressed in walking gear, we were not exactly attired for such an elegant place, which opened in 1937 and was designed to look like the interior of the Queen Mary ocean liner. It reminded me of Viennese coffeehouses, too. Happily, they take any large bags to store out of the way.

I ordered the Swiss breakfast rosti: grated potato fried with gruyere cheese and cream, with bacon, tomato, mushrooms, and a poached egg. Yum is an understatement. And the bacon was done perfectly. Highly recommend Betty's Cafe Tea Rooms should you visit York one day!

We caught the 10:23 bus to Whitby. We were sat just forward of the open windows and there was a sunroof, so it was quite warm and stuffy - and the Coastliner bus takes two and a half hours to cover 60 miles - but the views were great, it's a very scenic route that skirts the edge of the National Park. We got off the bus at Goathland, just 20 minutes from Whitby, to go for a walk.

Goathland is a small village up on a hill, with a picturesque row of shops as its centre. It was used as the setting for the TV series Heartbeat, and the steam train railway station was used as Hogsmead in the Harry Potter films. For the walk, we'd decided on a 3-mile circular route that would take us through some woodland and to some waterfalls. Mallyan Spout was lovely, a tall vertical waterfall in a lush little valley. We took our shoes and socks off and went for a paddle in the stream, which was fun but the rocks were very slippery! After sitting on the rocks for a while, letting our feet dry while gazing around at the greenery, and watching and listening to the stream, we left and carried on to find Beck Hole... but we couldn't, which was a shame, especially as we could have spent more time at Mallyan Spout. 

After making our way back to the village we went into the tea rooms at the end of the row of shops. I had a slice of Yorkshire curd tart - which I hadn't heard of before, but it was yummy of course - and a refreshing glass of milk! Nice that they had the latter on the menu. The curd tart is a sweet pastry case with a filling of curd cheese, currants, butter, spices, and often a bit of lemon curd or zest.

We sat a long time waiting for the bus - the last bus of the day, even though it wasn't even 5pm yet - fearing that it had been and gone really early or had been cancelled, but thankfully it turned up eventually. When we arrived in Whitby we found the B&B, checked in and rested for a while, then went back out to get some dinner - which, of course, had to be fish and chips on the pier.

After dinner we crossed the river and explored more of the quaint, winding, cobbled streets, before climbing the 199 Steps up to St Mary's Church on top of the East Cliff. Wandered around the atmospheric clifftop graveyard, the stones weathered and pitted and largely unreadable from the salt spray. Whitby Abbey looming majestically in the background. Walked around the Abbey's perimeter wall as the sky darkened, standing on tiptoe to catch glimpses of the ruins. 

Tuesday 12th

We wanted to do a walk in the North York Moors National Park while we were up there, and see some of the high moorland. The Esk Valley Railway runs between Whitby and Middlesborough, through the NP, so we caught that line to the village of Danby. There's a National Park visitor centre there at Danby Lodge, which had a cafe, gallery, and shop. We didn't go in the cafe but the gift shop was wonderful and we spent quite a while in there. After doing so I didn't want to leave with nothing so bought a pretty card that I'll put in a scrapbook.

We walked across the moors from Danby to the village of Lealholm. The day was cloudy and as we got up onto the moorland the wind was chilly. But it was a beautiful place. It took us about an hour to reach Danby Beacon, the highest point in the area, and then another hour or so to move down from the purple moorland to the green valley where picturesque Lealholm nestled. The village has stepping stones crossing the river, so we sat down on those to eat lunch, absolutely loving being surrounded by the sounds of the water.

Returning to Whitby in the afternoon, we wandered the riverfront to the seafront and along one of the piers, and visited the Museum of Whitby Jet, before getting dinner at a busy pub overlooking the water. Then we boarded the 8pm sunset boat trip, which was lovely.

As we disembarked around 9:30pm and started heading back into the town, we saw the full moon rising low over the hill, so we stood to watch it for a while. It was a lovely warm summer evening and we partly wanted to make the most of it and stay out, but were also pretty tired and didn't want to go somewhere busy and noisy. So we headed back towards the B&B. But on the way we passed a small gin bar, the Arch & Abbey, which was almost empty (and therefore quiet), which specialised in local drinks, and decided to go in. I got a Whitby Bramble & Bay gin with elderflower tonic, which was nice... but we had to drink quite quickly as it was around 10:30pm and they closed at 11.

I wish there were more places for people like me, who don't like busy noisy bars and such like. It's nice to stay out late on a summer evening but I don't want to have to go to somewhere that is an assault on the senses to do so. There need to be late-night cafes, bookshops/libraries, and dessert bars. So-called dessert places that do waffles and crepes don't count. I want crumble, treacle tart, bakewell tart, fruit pies, sticky toffee pudding, rice pudding, cinnamon buns, fresh fruit with yoghurt, jelly and ice-cream, Viennese cakes, Indian ras malai and dudh jalebi, Indonesian dadar gulung, and other sweet treats from all over the world.

Wednesday 13th

After a very busy few days and a relatively late night, we had a more leisurely morning, taking the time to have a cooked breakfast before finishing packing and checking out of the B&B at 10am. The beach and the whalebone arch were the only things we hadn't yet seen in Whitby so we headed there. As the sea came into view just a few minutes after leaving the B&B we wished we'd got ready to go before breakfast so we could leave shortly after 9 and have more time at the beach before our bus at 11. It was gorgeous, another bright warm sunny day but with a fresh breeze from the north, the tide was out so there was a wide strip of sand sparsely dotted with people, white horses on the deep blue sea and lines of breakers on the beach, and a sharp horizon free of haze. After standing gazing at it for a while we reluctantly pulled ourselves away to walk back up the cliffs for a quick look at the whalebone arch, and the Abbey visible on the East Cliff, before heading to the bus station.

The bus journey back to York was long but fairly pleasant and uneventful, thankfully we were able to get seats towards the back of the bus so the air flow from the open windows reached us. We had two and a half hours before our train at 4pm so grabbed some lunch from the Shambles market and took it to the Treasurer's Garden. I grabbed a lemonade from a street vendor on the way too, which I soon regretted as it wasn't very sweet and just a bit too sharp even for me - that and the spiciness and tanginess of my samosa chaat lunch put me off wanting the lemon and basil sorbet we were planning to get from a parting visit to Roberto's.

After a brief but pleasant sit-down in the shade of the pretty Treasurer's Garden, we set off again to visit a couple of shops we hadn't had time to before: one selling infused olive oils and balsamic vinegars, which were yummy but a bit pricey as you have to buy the glass bottles too, and a tea shop (in my case, the bookshop next door). We each left the latter with a small purchase, then went to Roberto's. I still wasn't feeling up to another lemony concoction - the lemon and basil sorbet will have to wait for another visit - and sadly the yoghurt and mandarin gelato they had previously wasn't on today's menu, so I got a ricotta and honey gelato. It didn't have lots of flavour, which wasn't surprising, but it was nice and creamy. We ate them on our way to the Museum Gardens, where we barely had time to stop and appreciate the vibrant flowerbeds and ancient ruins before going to the train station. 

It was such a lovely trip, and we enjoyed York especially. We went back in January for a weekend just to the city, doing some of the indoor things it was far too nice to do in July - visit the Yorkshire Museum, the Railway Museum, wandering the streets  at a quieter time of year and mooch round the independent shops (I bought the most adorable teddy bear from the teddy bear shop). And of course we had to revisit Betty's. Sadly we still didn't manage to go inside the Minster!