Great news! I think I am acclimatising! Only had 4 layers on today. I’ll be in my shorts in a week or two. 😜

A nice drive across to Scarborough & then up the coast. Shortly after arriving in the UK we joined English Heritage which gives free admission to a lot of historical sites throughout the UK. The other good thing about this membership is we have seen more of the countryside & villages as we track down some of these historic sites. The back roads have proved more interesting than the major highways.

We took a detour to Pickering to see the castle ruins.

Onto the seaside town of Scarborough & it was 🥶Maybe I haven’t acclimatised. Funnily enough we didn’t see any girls in their G bangers on the beach. 😂 But we did see a caravan park though which is unusual. Have only seen one caravan in the week we have been here.

They must be putting steroids in the hot chips as the seagulls are huge!

And onto Whitby not far up the coast.

In the year 664 a famed Anglo Saxon Monastery stood on the site & it was here that church leaders gathered for the Synod of Whitby, a meeting that settled the date of Easter.

In 1078 the site was chosen for another monastery, Whitby Abbey. King Henry VIII suppressed the abbey in 1539 & it fell into disrepair along with all other abbeys he suppressed across the country. He did this in retaliation for being ex-communicated from the Catholic Church because he divorced his first wife. After 20 years she hadn’t given him a son & heir so he traded her in for a younger model.

And because he was the King of England & he could do what he wanted, he didn’t just suppress the abbeys he ransacked them. He also took other property, treasury, valuables & anything else he liked from the Catholic Church & then started his own religion- the Church of England. Apparently for the locals the abandoned abbeys were like a Bunnings. They would go there & take what they needed for a DIY job – stone, timber …

Bram Stoker, author, set part of his novel Dracula, amongst the scenic ruins of Whitby Abbey.