Whitby

The gaunt bones of a 13th-century Benedictine abbey on the East Cliff over the harbour, floodlit at night and visible for miles. This is the silhouette Bram Stoker handed to Dracula. English Heritage runs it, so it comes with a visitor centre and a car park, but the ruin itself, in fog especially, earns every bit of its reputation.

Best shot The roofless abbey arches against a grey sky, or floodlit after dark, from the churchyard side.

• Touristy

Climb the 199 stone steps from the old town to a squat Norman church and a windswept graveyard where the headstones lean and blacken and the cliff itself is quietly eroding into the sea, taking the dead with it. This is where Dracula lands as a black dog and bounds up the steps. Go at dusk once the day trippers have gone.

Best shot The leaning tombstones on the cliff edge with the abbey behind, best in low sun or fog.

• Solo-friendly
• Touristy

A perfectly preserved Victorian museum, glass cases and handwritten labels and all, run by a literary and philosophical society since 1823. Among the fossils and whaling relics is its dark star: the Hand of Glory, the mummified hand of a hanged man, once carried by burglars who believed a candle made from it would keep a house asleep. The only one left in the country.

• Quiet
• Adults only

A great arch made from the jawbones of a whale on the West Cliff, a memorial to Whitby’s brutal whaling past, framing the abbey across the harbour. Grim history, excellent view.

Best shot The abbey framed dead centre through the whale-jaw arch, at sunrise.

A cheerfully tacky walk-through on the harbourfront: animatronics, jump scares and a gift shop, telling the Dracula story with more enthusiasm than budget. Nobody’s idea of high culture, but a fun ten minutes if you lean into it. Skip it if you only want the real gothic.

• Touristy
• Kid-heavy

The old town’s real secret is off Church Street: a maze of tiny yards and ghauts, the narrow passages and stepped alleys that run down to the water between the cottages. Poke into them. Most visitors never leave the main drag.

Best shot A narrow ghaut framing a slice of harbour and the abbey beyond.

• Solo-friendly

A wild, fossil-strewn bay below the cliffs past the abbey, with the black ribs of a wrecked ship stranded on the rocks at low tide and ammonites underfoot. Check the tide times before you climb down, and do not get cut off.

Best shot The wreck’s rusted ribs on the rocks at low tide, best at sunrise.

• Quiet
• Solo-friendly

Eight wildly eccentric Victorian rooms on the West Cliff, no two alike, crammed with taxidermy, curiosities and flea-market finery, in a house where Lewis Carroll once stayed. No televisions, breakfast delivered in a basket. Strange and lovely and entirely the point.

• Adults only
• Quiet

A Tudor manor of 1516, the oldest house in Whitby, all low beams and dark oak and a resident ghost or two. More characterful than polished, and all the better for it.

• Adults only

A 1681 coaching inn on Church Street in the old town, narrow and dark and low-ceilinged, steps from the bottom of the 199 steps. Creaky, atmospheric and central.

• Quiet

A tiny 400-year-old pub on Church Street, snuff still on the bar, Yorkshire ales and little tapas plates, barely room to swing a cat. One of the best-preserved old pubs on the coast. Get there early for a seat.

• Solo-friendly
• Adults only

A pub at the foot of the 199 steps with the best window seat in Whitby, right over the harbour mouth. Busy and it knows it, but time a pint here for sunset and forgive it everything.

• Touristy

Proper pies in a cramped 16th-century timber cottage so old and crooked it feels like a film set. Cheap, cosy and exactly what you want after the cliff wind.

• Solo-friendly

The most famous fish and chips in England, in a black-and-white harbourfront house. The queue is legendary and the hype is mostly earned. Come off-peak, or accept your fate in the line.

• Touristy

Jet is fossilised wood, black and light and warm to the touch, and Whitby is where the Victorians carved it into the mourning jewellery that a grieving Queen Victoria turned into a national uniform. W. Hamond has been working it since 1860. Buy the real thing, not the plastic on the racks nearby.

• Solo-friendly

A Victorian jet workshop found untouched behind a false wall, now part tiny museum, part working shop. See how the black stone is cut and polished, then buy a piece with a clear conscience.

• Solo-friendly
• Quiet

A good independent bookshop on Church Street, strong on local history, folklore and, inevitably, Dracula. The kind of place to pick up something to read up on the cliff.

• Solo-friendly
• Quiet