The weather forecast for today was much better and so we decided to press ahead with our plan to visit Whitby with Kevin.
First though we needed to sort out our own breakfast and so we drove into Thirsk and went to the local Wetherspoons situated on the Market Square. It was as sticky as every other Wetherspoons and we nearly changed our minds after walking in, but we carried on and ordered. At least there didn’t appear to be anyone drinking beer at 8am.
To be fair the porridge with banana was very acceptable as was the breakfast wrap, I accompanied it with. The tea though was not good which was a shame with the unlimited refills. I’m not sure what it tasted of, but tea was the minor flavour I was getting.
Karen was itching to get moving so that we were not late in meeting her little brother off the train at Thirsk. We arrived in very good time, and she was pleased to see him again.
With our extra passenger for the day, we headed for the 1-hour drive to Whitby, a place neither of us had visited before. The drive took us over the North Yorkshire moors which would have been pretty apart from some dark clouds looming overhead. I may have moaned more than once that the idea of driving to the coast was not looking like a good one.
My mood was not improved when we arrived at Whitby and found a parking space near the marina. It wasn’t just the parking cost but the walk we then took along the marina and what seemed to be the main drag. It was tacky and seedy reminiscent of Hemsby on a bad day, full of amusement arcades and tat shops. I was not impressed and had expected much more. It didn’t help that I was approached several times by various chuggers wanting me to save some dogs and other people just begging. The calibre of other people visiting also was poor.
We walked out to the harbour boardwalk where the wind was chilly, and it felt as though it was going to rain any moment. The sea looked grim and uninviting.
On the walk back we saw the statue of Captain Cook high on the cliff and surprisingly Karen was up for climbing the steps to see it up close.
It was such a good decision as we then started to find the much nicer parts of Whitby. It was like the Alan Sherman song – Hello Muther. The sun started to break through and once on the cliff top everywhere looked and felt much better and dare, I say classier. This was the Whitby I had been expecting. The view across to the abbey on the opposite cliff was one I recognised from pictures.
On the way down the cliff we stopped for a quick cuppa in a strange coffee hut called Sherlocks for no reason we could fathom before driving in the car up to the Abbey.
Yet another car parking fee later we walked to the Abbey and despite the very hefty admission fee we went in. The abbey was quite a sight and will be nice when it is finally finished. We were curious about the connection between the abbey, Whitby and Dracula (or Count Alucard as the boys knew him when they were young). It seems that Bram Stoker did spend time here and just based his story on some of the existing myths or stories about Whitby.
We walked through the gift shop before finding the tea rooms where we had a toasted sandwich with a hot drink.
On the way out I got a refund on our hefty admission fees in return for a yearly English Heritage membership along with an extra 25% off. I calculated we only need to visit a couple more places in the next 12 months to get our money fully back.
From here we drove round to the opposite cliff on the other side of the harbour again where we walked along the high cliff top in glorious sunshine. It was a lovely walk with a lovely view looking along the coast.
We sat on a couple of benches before Karen got her and Kevin an ice cream before we finally left Whitby. It had been a good decision to come here today and, in the end, if we ignore the horrible tacky street, we had walked along to start with it was a good place to visit.
The drive back was straight forward, and we deposited Kevin in good time for his train (which was then delayed so he caught the next one some 15 minutes later). We went back to the room for a cuppa before heading out to dinner.
Tonight, we went to Bianco’s, an Italian restaurant in the market square. It was very busy although some of clientele were dubious (or at least the ones on the next table were). The food was fine, and I had the largest Calzone in the world. Fortunately, most of it was just air and I managed my best with it.
After this we were back in our room and Karen made a cuppa whilst watching some history documentary. It was another early night for us.
We were up and in the big house for our final breakfast at 8.30am which was to the usual high standard. This morning, we were joined from a couple who were in the room we stayed in the previous year. They were amiable enough even though the quietly spoken guy kept staying ‘I don’t want to get onto politics’ and then wherever the conversation went he related it back to how hyper cryptical he thought various members of the Labour party act much to his wife’s annoyance.
By 9.45am we were checked out and we headed into Thirsk for one final time. We got our free one-hour parking and headed into one of the nicest Café Nero’s and friendliest we have been in. We had our free drinks and then headed for a very leisurely walk around the Market Square and spent some time in the delightful book store which seemed to have already sold out all of their copies of my book.
I couldn’t resist popping into the James Herriot Museum gift shop to find nothing had changed since our last visit. I passed some Americans coming out who were exclaiming that it was the best museum they had ever visited. High praise but somewhat perhaps misplaced.
After buying some lunch to eat later from a local bakers we set off on a 175-mile journey to Cambridge.
The drive was fine apart from a couple of hold ups on the A1 due to road works which added about 20 minutes to the journey. Just under halfway we pulled into some services to eat our lunch and to relieve ourselves. I got Karen a cuppa but went without myself in case I then needed another toilet stop.
We found the parking stop I had booked in Cambridge easily enough and set off on the 1 mile walk to Parkers Piece field. At one corner was a Pizza Express where we managed to stretch out our meal for 2 hours until it was time to walk across the field to the Comedy Garden area that had been set up.
The Big Top Tent was as hot as we remembered from last year. The compere John Robins was very good as was Mike Wozniak. The headliner was Alan Davies who was very funny about growing old.
By 10.30pm we were back in the car and moving which was a marked improvement on last year where it took us 1 hour to get off the multi-story car park.
We listened to the Lionesses winning penalty shoot-out against Sweden on the radio which provoked much annoyance from the Penalty King Karen at the number of misses taking place.
We were home and I had managed to put out the wheelie bin by midnight. It had been a good trip, and we have already booked an extended trip for next year.
