A Few Days By The Sea At Robin Hood’s Bay, Yorkshire

Zagan the motorhome is currently being buffeted by the wind and drenched in the rain, but he doesn’t mind as he has a sea view! He’s perfectly balanced on the hillside of Hook’s House Farm campsite overlooking Robin Hood’s Bay (N54.43838, W0.543396), where every pitch has a sea view!

When we booked this place last week the sun was shining and it was hot, we should have realised that wouldn’t last as we got closer to the August Bank Holiday, but we needed a few days away. We had mulled over the idea of going to France, figuring we’d be less at risk of catching Covid-19 in a quiet rural French aire than on a busy UK campsite. We even had the moral discussions as to if it would be the right thing to do at the moment, do the French really want us there?

We never reached an answer to that one, but in the end we had to wait for my passport to be returned (it had been sent as identification for a pension transfer as helpfully the pension company wouldn’t accept a certified copy unless it was done by a solicitor or accountant, unsurprisingly no local ones wanted to offer that service, which involves a face to face meeting, when I started the process), and by the time my passport did come back France was on the quarantine list. That meant we wouldn’t be able to get health/travel insurance, and if we did need to come home for some reason we’d have to quarantine for two weeks. We’ve done it once this year when we returned from Spain, and didn’t fancy going through that again.

Looking around the UK during the school holidays, and with the uncertainty around travel abroad due to the pandemic (I still can’t believe that’s a sentence I’m writing in this blog, it’s so strange) a lot of campsites were either full or very expensive. Our two trips out in the UK this summer, to Edale in the Dark Peak and Carsington in the Derbyshire Dales, took us back to campsites we’d visited in the past. This time we decided to venture to an area we’ve visited before but not in a motorhome. Previously we’d stopped in a cottage in the beautiful seaside village of Staithes, but every cottage everywhere appears to be full, so the fun and games of trying to pick a campsite began. I don’t know why I find it so stressful trying to find somewhere, I can only think it’s because I want a campsite that is good value for money, and in the UK campsites are generally much more expensive than abroad (especially as we normally use our ACSI discount card).

With the help of the searchforsites website, we found Hook’s House Farm and it had really good reviews. It’s £20 a night which, to me, seems a lot for a field with a service point, but its location really is something special and that’s worth paying a bit extra for. We arrived in the middle of Storm Francis, and the owner Paul met us with a warm smile, a map of where the essentials are on the site (a nice touch) and instructions about the covid guidelines for the site – which made me feel safer straight away. Despite the lashing rain and howling wind, he then proceeded to help us onto our pitch and onto huge wooden wedges he provided, making sure we were level and happy before he left. What a welcome.

At this point we discovered we had a small problem, the fridge wouldn’t light on gas. It just clicked away. We thought it might have got wet as the rain had been quite exceptional (and I do have previous for washing the hob and soaking the fridge gubbins behind it so it won’t light), or maybe it was struggling because the wind was pointing at its external vent. We tried for about 20 minutes without any luck, as my mind planned the meals we’d eat in the next 24 hours to prevent the food from going to waste. Then finally it lit – phew! My sausage, fish, chicken combo would have to wait for another occasion. Jay headed out for a run in the rain, while I kept dry and warm in Zagan. As I read every so often I would hear a click, then nothing, then a couple of clicks. Something was clearly still not right with the fridge, but it was working and cold inside, so would hopefully sort itself when the weather eased. That night as the weather eased the clicking became more frequent, meaning the fridge was going out more often and trying to relight itself. If it doesn’t automatically relight in thirty seconds, we have to manually relight it. Unlike counting sheep, counting fridge clicks leads to a sleepless night and by the morning we were both shattered.

Problem solving mode kicked in, and after a post on the fantastic Hymer Owners Group Facebook page we had a range of ideas to try. As Jay worked his way through these, I contacted the campsite owners and explained the situation, they couldn’t have been more helpful offering frozen ice blocks or the option of hook up (and extension cables if ours wouldn’t reach from our pitch). We opted for the hook up option, and at the same time extended our stay as we really like it here. With the fridge problem temporarily fixed and any further repairs on hold until we get home and have access to the right tools, we set off for a look around Robin Hood’s Bay.

Fridge Issue : If you’re interested, we think there’s some dirt in the gas burner which won’t shift by blowing down the flue. We can’t get access to the burner as the vent it sits behind is under the rear bumper (we hope). Back home we’ll have the tools to cut off the screws that have gone rusty on the bumper and drill some new holes so we can put it back on, once we’ve replaced the gas burner and thermocouple, and cleaned the flue, We were told when it happened on our previous Hymer Dave this should be done every few years and it hasn’t been touched in the five years we’ve had Zagan due to the lack of access to it.

It’s years since we visited and my only real memory of the place was a very steep hill and a road that stops at the sea – yep, I had remembered it right. Clustered around that steep road is a small village with a plentiful supply of shops selling sweets, buckets and spades, Whitby black Jet jewellery and fossils. By 11am the car parks were full and we watched in awe at optimistic motorhomes driving around them trying to find a space (by 1pm the car parks were full and snarled up). Our campsite was just a ten minute walk over a field to the village, and we joined the throngs of people on the steep hill down to the harbour, trying to keep our distance from people.

After watching the sea lap up the road for a while we climbed a set of steps which took us up between the houses to a viewing area overlooking the beach. With the tide right in there was no beach to be seen, but it must have been there otherwise there was no way the ice cream van could have got to where it was! For his sheer ingenuity at finding somewhere to park in such a tiny, tight village I felt it only right I buy an ice cream; if you are ever here I can thoroughly recommend the raspberry cheesecake flavour.

With the viewing area filling up and no sign of any beach becoming visible anytime soon we headed up some more steps onto the Cleveland Way, a 110 mile walking path which hugs the coast around here. We only walked as far as Boggle Hole, once I saw the name I knew we had to go, where there is a Youth Hostel and cafe next to the cave it is named after – Boggle being an old name for a Goblin.

We turned around here and headed back to, a now very busy, Robin Hood’s Bay and back over the field to the campsite. Here Jay set about some repairs to Zagan’s water fill point using one of the most useful tools we always carry with us – epoxy glue and a wooden skewer. The pipe had come loose and water was leaking into the storage lockers. Jay soon had it fixed and as the weather had brightened up we were able to dry out the locker carpets before putting them and everything else away. With the fridge running on electric, no wind or rain and out pitch booked until Monday, we slept like logs.

Our good friends Richard and Jenny, who we first met in Pärnu in Estonia and then kept bumping into across Finland and Norway, live in York and got in touch to arrange to pop over and see us. We greeted them on Thursday morning and with a foot bump instead of the usual hug, before we all donned our masks and jumped into their car for the short drive to Whitby. We had a great time catching up with them and after a quick detour to a fossil shop (to get our eye in), the Whitby Jet museum (free to enter) we headed up to the Abbey on the headland. We chatted as we walked along another part of the Cleveland Way, finding ourselves in Whitby Holiday Park. Jay masked up and headed into reception to check availability, for when our current campsite is full – ten minutes later we have our pitch booked for next week.

Next to the campsite is a path down to Saltwick Bay, and once the tide retreated we made our way over to the cliffs for some fossil hunting. I have had ‘find a fossil’ on my bucket list for years. We’ve looked under rocks on a Swiss mountain and even stopped off in fossil hot spots in the Moroccan desert to hit stones with a hammer, but with no luck or clue what we were doing. Within five minutes of peering among the rocks here we’d both found a bit of an ammonite. A few hours later we had quite a haul.

As the weather tuned we tore ourselves away from the fossil fun and carried on along the coast back towards Whitby. Unfortunately the weather and tide had other ideas. The rain started and it was still going to be a while before the tide went out far enough to return via the beach.

We slip-slid our way back over seaweedy fossilised mud flats, which also included dinosaur footprints, and back over the headland to the town. We finished a fantastic day with an ice cream in the rain (salted caramel, not quite as good as the raspberry cheesecake, but still very good). Reaching the campsite the cloud had come down and the rain was fully pelting down, so we said our farewells, jumped out of the car and legged it into Zagan. Later we sorted through our fossil stash and worked out which ones to keep and which to return to be beach when we’re camped there (or rather when Zagan is at the campsite and I am on the beach fossil hunting).

The wind and rain didn’t leave, and around 2am we both reached for ear plugs as it became too loud to sleep (feeling sorry for the folks here in tents). It’s been grey and rainy all day today too, but hopefully tomorrow things will start to brighten up so we can do some more exploring on the paths around here.

Ju x