My husband and I have an apartment booked in Whitby for a week in May. What are the must see/do's, places to eat etc.

Jenny, it is a wonderful place.

I proposed there!

There are at least 3 other current threads with both myself and Morgana posting to suggest places of interest. It may be worth keeping an eye on those threads to follow their progress.

Also I can't give you any more info until I know what your interests are.
What I might love to do in and around Whitby may not be what you would like to spend time doing (I'd be out on the hills for a long walk with a picnic and then a very nice dinner somewhere in the evening for instance).
Plus (very important to know this) will you have a car?

Hello Morgana, Yes we will have a car and we are interestd in the countryside, scenic drives, history (being Australian, very interested in Captain Cook). Intend to go on the North Yorkshire Railway (Heartbeat fans!). Great places to eat for lunch or dinner are also a must. So any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Hi Jenny, we too will be in the North Yorkshire area early June, click on my name as Morgana & humpty hasve given me a lot of helpful ideas. I am one of the current threads going asking similar questions to yourself and an Aussie too!

Er that is have not hasve!

Hello Maudie, thanks for that!
We leave the 31st March and fly out of London on the 5th June. We have 4 days in London then train to Paris for 3 days, train to Nice where we have an apartment booked for a week then fly back to London where we pickup our car and head over to Blakeney in Gloucestershire for 3 weeks (mainly for family history reasons) we hope to see a bit of Devon/Cornwall and wales from here.

Then we head north to Derbyshire for 4 days (family history again) then over to Whitby for a week then its off accross the Dales to Windermere with 2 nights in both places (I visited Windermere last year so this is just for my husband to see some of the Lake district) then we have 7 days making our way up as far as Inverness and back down to Edinburgh (where we drop the car) through Braemar and St Andrews.

We have 4 days in Edinburgh (my 3rd visit the husbands 1st) before taking the train to London for our flight home via Singapore.

This will be my fourth time to the UK/France and my husbands first so we are getting very excited about it finally getting closer after planning for 12 months now!

If you go on the North Yorkshire Railway you might like to take the train from Goatland to Grosmont and walk back.
The walk takes you along a disused railway track, so it is easy walking and through beautiful countryside

Hi Jenny, thanks for your response to my question. Your trip sounds fantastic by the way. (Some of the ideas below you'll find on my responses to Maudie's questions but I've tried to list below mainly places that are pretty near Whitby itself).
You will obviously explore Whitby itself, and go on the NYM Railway. The railway does some trips that include a 3 course meal and these are very popular - the food is pretty good too. Something exciting about having a meal on a train I always think.
http://www.nymr.co.uk/food-and-drink...-diner-service
Some other places you might like to explore.
1) Robin Hood's Bay - picturesque fishing village, very steep road down to the sea (flat shoes)
2) Staithes - again a pretty village but also has Cook links.
http://www.staithes-town.info/histor...es_cook_rn.htm
3) Castle Howard - one of the most magnificent stately homes in England.
4)Dumcombe Park
www.duncombepark.com
5) Exploring not only the North york Moors National Park but also the Wolds and the Howardian Hills
6) York
www.visityork.org
7)Burton Agnes Hall
www.burtonagnes.com
8) Wheeldale Roman road - amazingly well preserved mile long stretch of Roman road in the middle of nowhere up on the Moors. Very atmospheric up there (I kept looking behind me as I walked along it!!!)
http://www.english-heritage.org.uk/d...le-roman-road/
9) Scarborough - not to everyone's taste but I quite like the place. Castle, Anne Bronte's grave etc
For places to eat in Whitby I'd recommend the Magpie Cafe or Trenchers for fish and chips. www.magpiecafe.co.uk
www.trenchersrestaurant.co.uk
Greens is also very nice for an evening meal, and don't miss Elizabeth Botham's tearooms.
www.greensofwhitby.com
www.botham.co.uk
Other nice places to eat in the area -
Estbek House, Sandsend
www.estbekhouse.co.uk
Fox and Houses, Goldsborough
www.foxandhoundsgoldsborough.co.uk
Lastly, in Whitby itself I recommend you go to the Sutcliffe Gallery which is full of the wonderful old sepia photos taken by Frank Sutcliffe of Whitby and the surrounding area.
www.sutcliffe-gallery.co.uk

..................and how could I forget - the wonderful pie shop in Whitby.
www.humblepienmash.com

If you are interested in Joseph Banks or Matthew Flinders, you should swing by Lincolnshire on your way to Whitby.

Ah MissPrism I went on that line as a child! My Mum was most amused to hear the engine driver shouting down the platform to the guy clearly learning to drive a steam train 'eh lad, dn't lose all the puff!"

If you are into jewelry Whitby specializes in "jet" stones for earrings, pins etc. Some of the pieces are quite lovely.

We only spent an overnight there but can't wait to go back. We took the railway - it was winter so we wished we'd had more layers and another blanket!

Thanks Morgana for your great tips! Makes me wish we had a couple of extra weeks to spend in the area!

Any tips for somewhere just outside York to stay for a night. We will be coming up from Crich and have a night somewhere before we check in to our Whitby accommodation. I thought we might stay on the outskirts of York and catch a bus/train into the city.

Thanks for the tip mztery! Our daughter would enjoy some Whitby jewellery.

My friend and I are in London visiting friends for 10 days are are considering spending 3 days in Yorkshire. We thought maybe we'd take the train to York and spend 2 nights there and one night in Whitby (renting a car starting the second day in York to explore the area). Our English friend says it wouldn't be worth staying in Whitby as there's not much to it. It sounded interesting to me. Is she right? Should we stay 3 days in York instead?

Doriana, we LOVED Whitby. There is plenty to do, we had a week there and are planning on going back in 2013 for another week.

OH, yikes. I hate to put this in to the mix, but find it only fair. We spent two weeks in the north, mostly in the North Yorkshire Moors, and then in the lakes. Our least favorite place was Whitby.

I thought it suffered a bit in comparison with the rest of the places we visited, including all the coastal areas. I enjoyed the Abbey, but not as much as others visited on the trip. Fountains and Castle Howard were both a better day out for us, than our Whitby visit.

I thought Whitby was crowded, and had a bit of a tacky vibe. It wasn't really clean, and I was actually grossed out by my meal at The Magpie.

going in the summer might be very different. we mostly travel in the winter so to avoid crowed, which in Whitby could be substantial.

Tuscan, I totally agree with your comments! We loved Robin Hoods Bay and wish we had spent all day there rather than splitting it with Whitby. We didn't go into the Abbey but did walk around the church next door, really the view from there of Whitby was lovely but wish we had left it at that. Nice walk out on the pier, awful fish & chips from The Magpie, we threw most of it in the bin and the carnival atmosphere was super tacky, just not our scene at all.

Different strokes for different folks I guess.