Something about the East coast of Yorkshire in Northern England

Hello everybody

I’ve just come back from a nice holiday “by the sea”. I went to the North East coast of England with my wife and son last week. This area is well-loved area for tourism in England and there are some nice sea-side resorts as well as the National Park the “North Yorkshire Moors”.

A few things that you may not know, Whitby is a small fishing town on the East Coast – and is really popular with tourists. It has a fine beach, some really good fish restaurants and an interesting old abbey, but it is also famous for being the place where Captain James Cook worked and set sail for his voyages of discovery in the southern hemisphere. There is therefore a “Captain Cook museum” and many references to the famous explorer are in the town – most notably a fine statue on the hill near the beach.

Whitby also is famous for being the place where Dracula came to England aboard a russian ship and the author of the book Bram Stoker was living in Whitby when he wrote the book.

Further inland, there is a steam railway called the North Yorkshire Moors railway. The journey starts in a market town called Pickering and goes all the way to Whitby. On of the train stations on this line is in a village called Goathland, and this train station is well-known as the train station used for filming the Harry Potter train that takes Harry to Hogsmeade.

In Goathland, there is also the oldest railway tunnel in the world.

We also went to a place called Eden Camp near the town of Malton which was originally a prison camp for Italian and German prisoners of war – which is now a second warld war museum and very well restored.

Pickering has a steam rally every August – which is where many restored steam tractors are shown in working order. The steam engines will slowly travel around the town and many people come to watch the old engines puff out their smoke – it really gives an impression to what it was like around 100 years ago.

Other towns on the Yorkshire coast are Scarborough – which is a popular seaside resort with a castle and Filey, a small seaside resort with a fine beach and rocky coves.

We also visited York – which is the county town and probably the most historic city outside of London. It used to be England’s second most important town after London and has been there since Roman Times.

I’ll tell you more about York in another podcast.

Bye for now