Weekend with Dong'n'Shaz part two

After our adventures with steam trains, we went to Whitby (I wrote this text some days after the event and in advance of having internet access again, so the days referred to are 4th 5th 6th May). On Friday it was time to leave Pickering and speed our way to Whitby. We stayed at The Dolphin on the bridge. There's only one bridge in Whitby itself, so it wasn't too difficult to find. Sorry, Dong, we managed to find, quite inadvertently, the only non-smoking pub in Whitby.

I should like to point out that Whitby was arse-clenchingly cold on Friday. This resulted in a great deal of entering public houses in order to get warm.

We did manage a visit to the Abbey (a brooding building if ever there was one) via the churchyard of St Mary's (read Bram Stoker's most famous work to learn more) but the icy wind soon blew us back into the arms of John Barleycorn at yet another hostelry.

An evening meal at The White Horse and Griffin featured the most ludicrously oversized portion of fish & chips I've ever encountered. An early(ish) night followed as yours truly was utterly out of steam.
Saturday saw the beginning of the Moor & Coast festival so we caught some excellent morris dancing on Whitby quayside before taking a goodly hike on the coastpath to Robin Hood's Bay. The weather slowly improved during the walk and we were also lucky enough to be there during the early part of the breeding season for kittiwakes and fulmars, a stunning sight as their respective colonies nested on the sheer cliffs.

Dong and Shazzer marched on ahead and found a friendly watering hole where we enjoyed a pint or two in the sunshine before taxiing back to Whitby for dinner at The Hatless Heron. Dinner was enjoyably interrupted by more of the country-dancing revellers, this time marching down the street by flaming torchlight in wolf masks.

We left Whitby on Sunday morning, just as it became more or less the only place in the UK with decent weather (after spending two days in which it had been virtually the only place to have suffered a miniature ice-age).

Back to Millbrook for Black Prince Day...