Whitby: An abbey, a vampire, and too many Endeavours!

Further up the Yorkshire coast, north of Scarborough, is another enormously popular tourist town. I did a Saturday day trip to Whitby while in the area, as did about a million other Saturday day trippers!

It's got a few special attractions, besides the quaint and crowded streets, too many seagulls, and the odd celebrity restaurant. Firstly it's overlooked by the dramatic ruins of the Whitby Abbey, a fine old structure that's never looked the same since Henry VIII took a dislike to it.

Then there's Count Dracula. Not in Transylvania after all. It seems Bram Stoker lived for a while in Whitby, and was inspired by the Abbey ruins somehow. He did set the story in Transylvania, but never actually went there. Funny, I'd earlier been contemplating a trip to Transylvania myself, but settled on Yorkshire instead. I had no idea I'd meet Dracula and his memorabilia here though!

Whitby was also the place where good old Captain Cook got his early seamanship training, and it's full of Cook memorials and museums and things. But I was a bit startled to discover that they have Endeavour replicas there too. I'd stupidly thought our Sydney one was the Endeavour replica. And there wasn't just one of the things. I saw two of them myself! I bet they're not as good as ours. And re Cook memorials and museums, here's my visit to the ones in Far North Queensland: Cooktown 2018

It's a steep walk up to the Abbey ruins.

No tribulations here today

This is Cape Tribulation, near where Captain Cook crashed the Endeavour into a coral reef, and where his several weeks of trials and tribulations began.

This is the Cape Tribulation Beach House resort. It's a pleasant and restful place to stay. The only minor tribulation (for some) is the lack of internet or TV reception. That was a plus though, in our opinion.

A Maritime Endeavour

Sydney's National Maritime Museum is usually worth a look. It has its permanent stuff, but also special little exhibitions that can be quite interesting. Then it has its collection of floating exhibits, which I'd somehow never got round to exploring.

The special little exhibition the other day was 'East of India', about trade links between colonial India and Australia. There was a lot of it, because the early Australian colonies were six months away from Britain, but only six weeks from India. So where was the obvious place to supply them from, especially after the near starvation of the early years?

As for the floating exhibits, how could one go past The Endeavour, or more accurately the Endeavour replica. As replicas go, it's the most faithfully replicated such ship around, according to the volunteer guide. The timbers are Australian rather than British, but the size, shape, colour schemes: everything is spot on, I was told, because the original plans had still been available to work from.

You have to mind your head as you walk around the rather small vessel, the original of which had been converted from a coal carrier with a crew of 12 into a world-circling expeditioner with nearly 100 on board. They'd had to put in an extra deck between the top and bottom ones to house the extra people, and for a fairly large section you actually have to bend double to navigate it. Most of the crew in those days were probably quite short, but Captain Cook, and expedition sponsor and naturalist Joseph Banks were extremely tall men, even by today's standards. If you've seen the movie 'Being John Malkovich', you'll remember the scenes in the low-ceilinged floor 7½. It's worse than that on the Endeavour.

You get to see the whole ship, and get a fabulous feel for what it might have been like on that first three year voyage. Banks had the best living quarters, and these days, when the ship's in port anyway, it's all decked out with his botanical samples.