Robin Hood's Bay

The village runs down a steep ravine in tiers of red-roofed cottages, with a single road descending at a gradient that keeps cars out of the lower half. In the eighteenth century it was among the busiest smuggling ports on the Yorkshire coast, and the local tradition, widely repeated, is that contraband could be moved from the bottom to the top of the village through connecting cellars and passages without appearing in the street. Erosion has taken whole rows of houses over the centuries and a sea wall was built in 1975. At low tide a wave-cut scar of Jurassic shale is exposed across the bay, rich in ammonites and belemnites, and it is one of the more productive fossil beaches in England. The Coast to Coast walk ends here, at the slipway.

What you actually see

• The stacked village - cottages tiered down a ravine too steep for cars.
• The fossil scar - Jurassic shale exposed at low tide with ammonites.
• The smugglers' cellars - the connected passages of local tradition.
• The Coast to Coast finish - the slipway where walkers end the crossing.

When to go

April to October, and specifically at low tide for the scar and fossils; the bay fills entirely at high water. Summer weekends are very busy in the lower village.

Honest expectations

The descent is steep and the climb back is hard, with no vehicle access to the bottom. The top car park is the only realistic parking and is charged. Hammering fossils out of the cliff is discouraged and dangerous; collecting loose material on the scar is the accepted practice.

Nearby

Whitby lies north; Ravenscar and the Cleveland Way run south along the cliffs.