Robin Hood's Bay
Robin Hood's Bay is one of the most picturesque and most visited fishing villages on the Yorkshire coast, a steeply tiered settlement of red-roofed cottages packed into a narrow ravine that descends from the cliff top to the beach below in a composition of extraordinary visual charm that makes it one of the most photographed villages in the north of England. The village has no connection with the legendary outlaw whose name it bears, the origin of the name remaining obscure, but its character as a former fishing and smuggling community on a remote section of the North Yorkshire coast gives it a historical atmosphere that complements its natural beauty.
The village descends steeply from the main road parking area to the beach below on a single, very narrow road flanked by the close-packed cottages of the fishing community, their doors, windows and small gardens creating a human-scaled streetscape of considerable intimacy. The narrowness of the space between the buildings, the steepness of the descent and the sound of the sea growing louder as you approach the beach create an experience of progressive revelation characteristic of the finest English seaside villages. At the bottom, the rocky shore opens out and the wide expanse of the bay, enclosed by the headlands of North Cheek and the cliffs toward Whitby to the north, provides a rewarding contrast to the enclosed village.
The beach and the rock pools exposed at low tide provide excellent fossil hunting, the alum shales of the Yorkshire coast having produced ichthyosaur and other Jurassic marine reptile remains over many years of collecting by both professional and amateur palaeontologists.
Robin Hood's Bay is the eastern terminus of the Coast to Coast walk, Alfred Wainwright's 192-mile crossing of England from St Bees in Cumbria, and arriving walkers traditionally complete their journey by dipping their boots in the sea on the beach below the village.