It rains rather a lot in Britain - even Visit Britain aren’t unwise enough to pretend it doesn’t. Most of our seaside resorts have, therefore, been spoilt by over-development to ‘cater for’ visitors when it’s too cold or wet for the beach. Whitby, however, 2½ hours northeast of Manchester and a 4½-hour drive from London - is different. Certainly there are amusement arcades, fortune-tellers, and tourist-tat shops in plenty. But since this town of 13,000 is still a working fishing port, it hasn’t been taken over completely.
Anyway, many years ago I was here researching an article about the explorer Captain James Cook, so the weather didn’t really matter. I’d brought some no-messing mountaineering waterproofs with me, and faced the rain and the howling wind, and gained some amusement from the few tourists struggling with their cheap plastic ponchos. But I did hope it would brighten later, because I also wanted some pictures of Whitby Abbey (below) for a calendar project. I didn’t get them on that occasion, and had to wait several years for the opportunity to revisit. But more recently I was finally able to walk in the footsteps of Whitby’s fictional villain (more about that below), as well as its real hero!
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