Essential Whitby: A Guide to the Town’s Legends, Treasures and Main Sites
Walking Tour
Walking Tour
60 mins
2.0mi
About the Tour
About the Tour
It’s not easy journeying to Whitby, so it’s important to make the most of your time here. On this guided walk, I'll introduce you to major local characters, engrossing legends and hidden treasures in this historic town, over a millennium in the making. Whether this is your first visit or your thirtieth, this tour is certain to make you look at Whitby in a new light. It also provides an ideal introduction to sites like the Whitby Abbey, the Captain Cook Memorial Museum and the Endeavour Experience, which you can return to at the end of the tour.
On this tour, you'll hear about:
• Some of the greatest voyages of exploration of all time
• Why people once thought the town was infested with serpents
• How Whitby jet, a gemstone, inspired the novel Dracula
• An illiterate poet
• Why there’s a polar bear in the town centre
• Why the houses with the best views were some of the cheapest
• The Hand of Glory and where to find it
This tour isn’t all about the past. I'll also tell you about Fortune's Kippers fish store, and where to find seaside fayre and the best strawberry tarts you'll ever encounter.
Folk Round by Kevin MacLeod is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license.
Tour Producer
Tour Producer
Devon Howard
I grew up in Whitby and genuinely believe there is no place quite like it on earth. Growing up I split my time between studying hard and rowing for the Fisherlads Rowing Club - nothing has really changed.
After school, I left the town to study at the University of Oxford and managed a couple of years in London where I worked in Westminster and studied for my MA in Philosophy. I returned home to pursue further study and established Whitby Town Walking Tours with my better half.
It had been a longtime ambition of mine to operate a tour company and my inspiration probably came from the Only Fools and Horses' episode 'A Slow Bus to Chingford'. Unlike Derek Trotter, however, I aim to give you accurate and well-researched tours of Whitby.
Whitby Town Walking Tours operate unique tours that focus on specific elements of Whitby, from the geology to art and literature. We operate most days during the summer season and you can find tour times on our website.
How VoiceMap Works
How VoiceMap Works
Focus on your surroundings, not the screen
Follow a route with turn-by-turn-directions
Listen as many times as you like
Take virtual tours anywhere
Buy for less on voicemap.me and sync
Use VoiceMap offline
Map
Major Landmarks
Major Landmarks
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Captain Cook Monument
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Whale Bones
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Pannett Park
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Dock End
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Endeavour Experience
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Captain Cook Museum
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Church Street
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St Mary's Church
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Whitby Abbey
Directions to Starting Point
Directions to Starting Point
Captain Cook Memorial on the West Cliff (near the Whale Bone Arch).
Tips
Tips
Places to stop along the way
Whitby Museum and Art Gallery, Endeavour Experience, Captain Cook Museum, Whitby Jet Museum, St Mary's Church.
Best time of day
You can take this tour anytime but the views are best during the daytime.
Whitby can be busy in the summer months and there will be fewer people around in the morning.
Precautions
Please be wary of traffic - cars are allowed on some of the streets you'll be walking along.
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Highly recommend this tour. Very informative and a great way to see some of the key sights in Whitby whilst learning about the history of the area.
This was a great way to spend the morning in Whitby, taking in the sites on a lovely walking route. The tour guide was funny and endearing and very knowledgeable. Couldn’t fault it!
Enjoy a nice afternoon stroll round Whitby with a few historical stories and info along the way. Take the time to look out for and read all the blue plaques and local history points of interest as you go. Finished of the walk with a pint at Whitby Brewery.
This is an excellent and very informative tour.
Despite being a regular visitor to Whitby over the past 50+ years, I learnt a lot in just an hour from taking the tour with Devon. I will be back. I'm confident there's much more to find out about this beautiful little town !
We have been to Whitby many times but we saw it in a completely different light following the audio tour. Fascinating history of the town, taking us to many places we have never seen before. Highly recommended.
Excellent tour! We saw places and found out the back stories that we would not have seen otherwise!
Fantastic tour. Great to see all the sights we would have missed accompanied with an inspiring commentary. Thanks again Tom, Anne, Ralph, Sheena and Joanne.
This was a fantastic guide around Whitby, especially on a really busy weekend - helped give us direction and a shape to our visit that we would not have had without it. Highly recommend
Really interesting facts. Great tour
Devon the narrative of the tour was excellent. I also liked the bits of added humour & your passion for Whitby is paramount. Thank you for taking us on your tour of Whitby even though it was a day shrouded in misty conditions which added to the atmosphere especially the abbey
Thank you for your kind review and I’m delighted you enjoyed the tour!
Superb Tour with clear clarity & content in abundance.
Would highly recommend this Tour.