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I’d never been to Whitby before. Everyone who I told said that I’d enjoy it, something about it being related to Dracula (real ones know I’m much more of a Nosferatu girlie.) First trip away of the year, first trip away with my partner. Quite a lot was riding on it going smoothly and it did. It actually went really well, there’s something about going somewhere new and doing nothing in particular. No job to go to, no correct time to wake up, no rigid plans, just doing whatever feels right at that moment in time. If you ever find yourself in Whitby and the surrounding areas, here’s some ideas of what you can get up to.

Stay at your partners Grandparents house

Maybe we’re starting off too hyper-specific. It’s a three hour drive to Whitby from your home and without any stops it is exhausting. You pull into a driveway quite abruptly really, you have no idea where you are of course. You’re just going where you are taken. On the road your main task is to feed your partner a sausage roll, you’re much too nervous to eat anything, so your tuna butty is abandoned on the backseat. When you finally pull into the drive, you sit in the car for a while to try and compose yourself. You don’t succeed of course but you really try your best. Down a set of stairs and through a door that’s been left unlocked for your arrival you find yourself in a rather large kitchen. The walls are littered with plaques about Nanny’s kitchen and Nanny’s cooking, obviously gifted by grandchildren. And then you meet her. She’s shorter than you and is sporting a rather chic, blunt bob. She comments on your height and how it’s nice that you’re on the shorter side, which makes sense because your partner is six foot something. You meet Grandad too, he’s very tall and sort of resembles Bob Odenkirk (my personal opinion!) You sit down over the first of many cups of tea and talk. It’s interesting. You see another side of the person you love, experience their family dynamic and you start to feel, well a bit sad.

Mourn the family relationships you don’t have yourself

In the evening I feel this overwhelming dread. I get a headache, my stomach hurts and of course, I’m not at home so I get my period. I quickly realise that I don’t really know how to act or behave in this situation. Yes I have grandparents, but I don’t really have the same sort of relationship with them. I feel this immense grief and I’m jealous. To me, my grandmothers are not the people that I would go to for advice, they have never passed on any family recipes to me. I realise that I barely know them as people. And it’s too late now. A lot of people would disagree saying it’s never too late. Except that in this case it is. The roles are too set in stone. You allow yourself to feel these things, but you don’t voice them. Instead you walk across the room and crawl into the single bed where your boyfriend is. You cry, he doesn’t ask questions and at some point in the night, you sleep.

Visit Whitby Town Centre

It’s cold and there’s a dampness in the air. It’s February. You park up in the town centre. It’s at this moment in time that you are so glad you decided to bring your big coat- even though it makes you feel so uncool. Walking down to the seafront the wind is merciless, leaving salty specks all over your cheeks. You quickly turn around and seek shelter in an amusement centre. Five pounds becomes a bowl full of two pence coins and you’re off. There’s at least 40 minutes worth of entertainment there. Five pounds becomes ten and you start to understand why the people at your workplace are the way they are. You decide to cut yourself off. You wander through the streets and popping into every alternative looking shop there is, and believe me there’s loads. You spend ages looking at crystals and smelling incense. After about an hour your bag is full of the stuff. The scent is bizarre. After a while you start to go quiet, you worry that you are running out of things to talk about. Am I ruining things? Am I bringing the mood down? Then you end up in front of Mr Chips.

Have Fish and Chips at Mr Chips

According to my boyfriend’s Dad Mr Chips is the best fish and chips in Whitby. I can believe it. We had to wait for a few minutes to be seated and when we were, it was in this tiny booth that jutted out from the structural pillar in the centre of the room. For 16 quid you can get a rather sizable battered cod, chips and a pot of tea or coffee is included in the price. You couldn’t dream of that in Manchester! The cod was good, it was flaky and sort of salty and the chips were big and fat, the fact I liked them is a miracle as I usually hate soggy chippy chips. But the real star of the show was the curry sauce. For an extra £1.50 you can get a gravy boat of curry sauce, but I have to say it was the best I have ever tasted. Not any of that nuclear yellow watery chip shop shite. It was spicy, like an actual curry and had a slick layer of orange oil on the top, but it wasn’t too greasy. I would go all the way back just to have it again.

Go to the beach

During our trip we went to two different beaches. At Sandsend the waves were so high they were crashing onto the road, I ended up in the splash zone a few times. On the beach we collected shells and pebbles, skipped stones into the sea and sat on a wall watching children play. The tides crashing up rock stacks in the distance. When we went to Robin Hood’s bay, the sea was different, calm in its temperament. We walked down a hill that seemed to go on forever ( which felt even longer walking back up it,) to the beach. The sea was far away and we walked and walked but still couldn’t reach it. I really began to understand why in the Victorian era they took melancholic people to the sea, the fresh air really does wonders.

Watch the Winter Olympics

When you get back to the house you’re greeted with a homemade stir fry and you sit upstairs and watch the curling and then the Hockey because who really cares about curling. Throughout your stay, you end up watching a lot of the Winter Olympics, especially the women’s figure skating, this is something both yourself and Nanny enjoy, each giving little critiques though knowing you could never do it yourself. We sat and watched Alysa Liu win gold for team USA, there’s something so amazing about her. Her positivity, the type that one can only achieve through years of hardship, the way she moves on the ice and the way she has rewritten the image of the sport is truly remarkable.

Visit Goathland

The next morning we woke up early-ish. It’s my boyfriend’s 25th birthday (haha old!) I eat some dry toast and have a cup of tea, while he opens cards and gifts and phones his dad. We decided to go to Goathland, to ride the steam train. His dad says it’s the offseason it won’t be running, Nanny insists it will because it’s half term. We get in the car and drive over the moors. It’s so open and wild up there, I think about Wuthering Heights, never read it though. I’m sure Kate Bush’s song is better anyway. We pull up into a tiny village where there are sheep roaming everywhere and of course, sheep poo is everywhere. Each careful step taken leads us to a row of shops. Apparently this a tourist attraction because there are people lining up to have their photo taken with a police car. I’m told that the show Heartbeat was filmed there. Means nothing to me. Obviously i force my boyfriend to have his picture taken and then we peruse the shops, even the one with the extremely questionable Gollywog display (Signs all over Shout “NO PHOTOS ALLOWED” “CCTV IN USE,” they knew what they were doing was wrong.) As we leave the shops there is a faint smell of smoke in the air, we walk down the hill towards the station, there are no trains running. Thanks Goathland, boyfriend’s crying now.

Don’t pay to see the Abbey

One thing about Whitby that everyone bangs on about is the Abbey. No one tells you it’s fifteen-fucking-quid to actually get onto the grounds. However, we found this very handy trick called standing on your tiptoes and looking over the wall that gives you pretty good results for a hefty charge of absolutely free. Although, a jobsworth employee may shout at you to “GET OFF THE WALL!” Instead we went into the gift shop to have a gander at all the Dracula related merchandise, but didn’t see the fella though. Disappointing much. I picked up a small bottle of Prince of Darkness Whitby gin for my Mum’s collection and we walked up the road to the brewery to have a well-deserved pint. Then the rain started.

Humble Pie and Mash

After spending the best part of an hour deciding our order for a Chinese takeaway, when we rang them they were closed for Chinese New Year. Bummer. We head back into Whitby to the Humble Pie and Mash shop. Not really sure if it was World War Two themed or just an old building, but the vibes were definitely there. We ordered with an overly enthusiastic server and then leafed through a book titled, Where Gary Eats. For those who don’t know, Gary Eats is a food reviewer youtuber who we watch religiously. At some point he had been to that very restaurant and reviewed it for his book (we watched the video when we got home obviously.) When the pies came I regretted my choice so much, I opted for Goats cheese and roasted veg, my partner went for sausagemeat and black pudding. I was gutted. Pies put away, we headed back for the final time and enjoyed coffee and walnut cake. The trip was coming to an end.

Take the scenic route home

We stopped off at a graden centre before leaving. It was here that I ate the biggest tuna melt of my life. Genuinely bigger than my head. You hit the road and after passing Eden CAmp you realise you haven’t been on the motorway for a long time. You follow tiny roads that lead into great open expanses, and through forests with windy roads and bridges over rivers. You end up near Ladybower reservoir and pass the devil’s arse, until you finally see home. Once there, you share a pizza and crash on the sofa, unready to face the world the next day.