Staithes

Tuesday 30th July 2024

Whitby is such a beautiful place, I always love this view from the bridge down to the harbour and it was stunning this morning. We set off at 8am to walk towards Staithes which is 12 miles away. It is going to be a hot day! First stop along the way at about 915 was Sandsend. As you can see from the photo the clue is in the name! The sea is so calm and blue today, there are already a few people in the water.

We walked on along the coast to Runswick Bay. As you can imagine the villages along the coast are down at the waters edge so there’s a steep hill down to all of them. What goes down must go up and there is a very steep climb out of Sandsend to the top of the cliff. After that it’s flat and beautiful until we get to Runswick Bay. As we approached the village we found THE STEPS!! They took us down from the cliff and went on forever!! We felt very sorry for those walking in the other direction! At the bottom there was an interesting climb through rocks and ledges to get to the beach. It would be impassable if the stream was high. We had walked about 9 miles by now and stopped for a rest. Robins Achilles was hurting so we decided to take the bus the rest of the way to Staithes.

The bus drops you at the top of the cliffs so yet another walk down but this was easy compared to Runswick Bay. Staithes is a lovely village full of tiny alleys. Anne and her family stayed here a few days ago. They were allowed to park their car at the bottom, I must ask her how that worked as I would not have fancied driving down or up!! Bus back to Whitby and a lovely dinner in the Black Horse pub.