Whitby or The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Bar

Arrived at our new site, York House, on  2^nd May. Just outside Whitby and it was  a Commercial Site, rather than one of the Club Sites. We haven't taken the risk of too many non club sites.

What a welcome!! The chap that showed us to our pitch could not have been more helpful and even placed the levellers and guided me onto them, as the site is on a hill and some of the pitches aren’t quite level. If you’ve never been in a Motor home, or touring caravan, you probably have no idea how a slope of just a degree or two can make life difficult. For example 5 degrees can knock the fridge out and just a small slope causes all sorts of annoyances with the sink not draining. Not to mention turning over in bed. The latter was probably the thing that amazed me the most and prompted me to buy a set of levellers.

The site is on a farm, with a hotel and bar in the farmhouse and maybe because the sun was shining, we fell in love with it immediately, with its huge views, including the sea and a distant Whitby Abbey.

We had a lovely sunset on our first evening.

And I had decided to make one of my, now legendary, Steak, Kidney & Ale pies, this time made with chocolate stout bought from the site bar.  It was wonderful!

  

Just a short walk away from the Site is the old railway line, closed by good old Dr Beeching and now a very popular walk and cycle path, going one way to Robin Hood’s Bay and the other, into Whitby. Both, allegedly, 3 miles but they did seem a bit longer than that!

On our first morning we decided, well, I decided we would go to Robin Hood’s Bay. Lovely walk but did take a bit longer than we thought.

I wanted a drink and we just managed to get a table outside a pub overlooking the beach. There was a group of just about 50’s there and we were highly amused to hear that every time one of them bought a Round it came to about £68. This is why I don’t believe in buying Rounds. I don’t think for a minute that every one of them bought a Round, so, get your own! I don’t mind buying someone a drink but in those numbers, just plain silly.

It took Mike about 15 minutes to get served, so he decided to order sandwiches for us. For me, no surprises here, he ordered Crab. I do in fact appear to be on a Crab Sandwich eating tour of the UK. The Crab was lovely but dear me, what was that bread? Cheap sliced brown bread that was very, VERY poor.

We’d decided on getting a bus back to the village we were staying in and while we were waiting for the bus a perhaps 30 something man started talking to me. We’d seen him a few times during the day and was obviously mentally handicapped in some way. The man he was with, whom I can only assume was his brother, as they looked similar, had gone to sit on the kerb a distance away. I suspect he was worn out by his brother’s chattering but I was happy to spend some time talking to him. We swapped info on the sites we were staying at and then he said “I don’t want to put you off York House but there was a murder there recently”. I let him chatter on about the incident, which was apparently Dog related, determining to find out more when I could get onto the Internet.

It turned out that a camper at York House had taken his dog into the bar there, this was a new allowance, as previously dogs were not allowed. A local man took objection to the dog for some reason. Later in the evening, they were both in the Hawsker village pub and an altercation started. The local stabbed the camper. The newspaper reports at the time didn't say he died but he was certainly seriously injured. I don't know what the outcome of his injuries were but it just goes to show, even in this blissfully peaceful, tiny village, you just aren't safe from violence and people who shouldn't be let out! This had only happened just over a week before we arrived!