Whitby Abbey

Tomorrow Izzy needs picking up from York, so the Minx and I decided to make a weekend of it; head over to York Saturday morning, have a mooch about and then see if we could find a decent restaurant for the evening. Except York appeared to be fully booked :-/ But, as ever, there turned out to be a plan B: Whitby and a hotel, La Rosa, which had been on one of the Minx's wish lists.

The journey across was reminiscent of this week's trip to Thetford; get to the edge of civilisation and then keep going. And going. Eventually, though, we found ourselves winding our way down the side of a valley into a fishing village reminiscent of those I'd seen in Cornwall.

First place on our list of Things To Do was Whitby Abbey, which was on top of one of the cliffs framing the town. Blimey it was cold and windy! But we wrapped up warm and made our way around to the visitor centre and thence onto the abbey itself, which rather reminded me of Shap Abbey, which we visited a few weeks ago.

And like Shap Abbey it has a locked doorway which leads to staircase up to another doorway maybe sixty feet above the ground. I managed to take this photo by poking my camera through the grate. I love the fact that you can see exactly how they built the spiral staircases, with the protruding unfinished stone sticking out of the wall and the slots in the central timber post. The only thing that I can't figure out is that that must be the original central post, mustn't it? How has it lasted all this time?!

After the abbey, we had a stroll though Whitby before heading up to the hotel, which was AMAZING. The room was extraordinary, with a wild west theme that was fascinating rather than tacky, and the owners have an approach to customer care that was wonderful. For example, after we'd been there a while, they knocked on the door and presented us with a plate of French Fancies.

In the evening we strolled down the hill for a drink and then to take a table at Green's, which was excellent. We started with oysters and proceeded to stuff ourselves with seafood and then finished with a platter of seaside sweets. And after all that we staggered back up the hill to bed!