What about Whitby? 6

What better way to work off those pies and pints than a 12-mile hike? Whitby is surrounded by prime walking country: with non-stop sunshine and 70 degrees the entire week of our stay there was no excuse to sit indoors. With a few hours to spare, there's no better excursion than to Robin Hood's Bay, the next town along the coast south from Whitby.

The coastal walk is easy to follow (just keep the sea on your left!) and not that strenuous, with little change in elevation along the way. You might wonder if you've taken a wrong turn when you enter a large holiday park not long out of the shadows of Whitby Abbey, but follow the signs through the caravans and soon it's nothing but sea, surf and grassy clifftops for the five miles or so to Robin Hood's Bay.

The walk takes two hours and, to be honest, it's a bit dull in parts. What little access to the sea involves so many steps down that you'd have to be rather fit and have plenty of time to spare in order to take a detour down to the shore. Keeping to the clifftop path, there's only a lighthouse

and a shipwreck along the way to break the monotony,

but depending on the time of year there's an abundance of wildflowers,

plus the views of the awesome abbey ruins.

It's all worth the effort when arriving in Robin Hood's Bay, a small town with a tiny fishing harbour squeezed into a fissure at the bottom of steep cliffs.

As a fishing port it once rivalled Whitby hundreds of years ago.

Its remote location also made it a favourite bolthole for smugglers, who were said to use a series of tunnels linking the towns' houses to evade tax officials and offload gin, silk, tea and other booty into wagons waiting atop the cliffs.

These days the clifftops are crowded with Victorian villas converted into B&Bs, but the older town down below is a delightful warren of ancient stone cottages.

The labyrinth of passages which helped the smuggling operation in days gone by succeeds in keeping the lower town largely free of traffic.

There is hardly room to turn around a car at the bottom of town in front of the tiny harbour. That day it was the best spot in town to sit down with an ice cream or fish or chips,

but the harbour is also the end of the famous Coast to Coast Walk, where hikers who have crossed the spine of the country from St Bees Head in Cumbria come to dip their boots into the North Sea.

Aside from a few pubs and shops there is not much to occupy your time in the town, but it's well worth wandering around the narrow lanes as you'll never know what you mind find, such as this whale's jawbone.

Climbing to the top of town, we found the Victoria Hotel, the lawns of which offered a lovely panorama over the town and out to sea. They served up delicious sandwiches, salad, cakes and tea which were a bargain at £13 for the pair of us, with wonderful views to boot.

We took a different route back to Whitby, following the 'cinder track' which is all that is left of the old railway that once ran through here. This was even more flat and level route than the clifftop walk, with high banks or hedges along much of the way which served as a windbreak. Ideal on a wet and windy day, but this prevented us from enjoying the views on this sunny afternoon. One of the old stations along the way rents out bicycles and there's a large church just off the path,

but the main highlight for us was reaching the old railway viaduct which crosses the river above Whitby. We arrived right as a tour boat from town was turning around in the river below.

Back in town after crossing the railway viaduct, it was time to celebrate completing our 12-mile roundtrip with a pint at The Station, but we took it easy because we had more walking planned for the next day. Click back again!