Travel: Whitby

Published on Tuesday 15 March 2011 18:44

Whitby. I'd never been before, but it was love at first sight.

Even out of season, even on a cold March evening, I just knew. Maybe it had something to do with the warm yellow light spilling out of the riverside pubs I passed on the way to our hotel, perhaps it was the sight and sound of people singing sea shanties inside them. Or it could be just because I hadn't stayed overnight at a British seaside resort for well, decades.

Then again, it could be Whitby was so much more picturesque than I had imagined, like one of those Lilliput Lane models brought to life: pink pantiled cottages all huddled together on the steep, traffic-free banks of the Esk, with the Gothic ruined abbey silhouetted against the sky, high above and all their lights reflected on the river running out to the sea beneath. Robin Hood's Bay, just four miles to the south, is even more extravagantly picturesque.

What more do you want from your ideal British seaside town? Quite a lot, actually, but Whitby ticks all the boxes. First of all, it isn't dead out of season. Secondly, it hasn't been gentrified out of existence: it may have its share of antique shops and hanging baskets, but I want more than that: there should be penny arcades, tattoo parlours, fudge and candyfloss sellers and Gypsy Rose reading fortunes down by the fish market too.

A good fish market is essential for any self-respecting seaside town. It's no matter if it's shut before the tourists bother to get up, as long as the fish and chip shops have good fresh stock every day. In Whitby's case, there's the greatest concentration of them that I've ever seen, all fighting it out with the Magpie Caf for the kind of name recognition that spreads beyond North Yorkshire.

Most of all, though, my ideal British seaside town has also got to have some sense of the past. I want famous writers to have visited, and maybe written something more than a postcard home. There should be a fine beach, preferably wide enough and with firm enough sand for cricket, but there should be some mystique about the place too.

And this is where Whitby scores over practically every place of its size that I can think of. This is where Bram Stoker (a 19th-century visitor, along with Dickens, Wilkie Collins, Henry James) made Dracula come ashore. It is where Captain Cook sailed from, the unlikely Cape Canaveral for those epic 18th-century voyages of discovery that opened Australasia. Roll back the centuries, and it is here, in 664, when the Northumbrian monastery on the site of the abbey had only been built for nine years, that the leaders of the British Church met to decide on which day they should celebrate Easter. Here where an illiterate herdsman called Caedmon - just one of the abbey's nine saints - one day woke up with a hymn to Creation in his head. The first oral poem in English, the greatest English voyager, one of fiction's scariest creations: all had Whitby roots.

Our own North Yorkshire voyage of discovery took us to The Marine Hotel, a boutique hotel above a cocktail bar/restaurant. We were lucky: there probably isn't a better view of Whitby than the one from either our lounge or the mezzanine bedroom above it. Given the excellence of the breakfasts, the Marine is spectacularly good value, particularly out of season - which, just because Whitby seems to attract more and more tourists each summer, might be the best time to visit anyway.

Once you've finished exploring the fishing villages nestling into North Yorkshire's cliff-faces (the best ones, like Staithes, aren't yet completely taken over by the second-home brigade) you might feel like some serious pampering. Scarborough is only 20 miles away, and the Crown Spa hotel is the only four-star hotel on the Yorkshire coast.

I've stayed in Scarborough before, but only at B&Bs on family childhood holidays, so it took me a while to adjust to the luxury of the Crown Spa hotel. But as I relaxed in my bath watching television, I noticed that it didn't seem to take too long. Indeed, I could quite happily have a passing fling with Scarborough. It has faded a bit since my childhood summers, but there are enough redevelopment projects on the go to show that it hasn't given up the fight. I wish it well. But from now on, my heart belongs to Whitby.

The Facts

Rooms at the Marine Hotel, Whitby, start at 79 a night, tel: [phone], or visit www.the-marine-hotel.co.uk; The Crown Spa hotel in Scarborough offers rooms from 70 a night (excluding breakfast), tel: [phone], or visit www.crownspahotel.com; for more ideas on places to visit, visit www.yorkshire.com

• This article was first published in The Scotsman on March 26, 2011