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.