We had a gentle start to the day with breakfast at 8.30am then we contacted a few people in NZ on Skype before we walked over to the Abbey. It was a bit drizzly but we made our way through the busy streets, looking at the various shops selling sweets and gifts as well as all the tea shops and fish and chip shops. We made out way up the 199 steps to the old church first. This was busy, in part because of the drizzle I suspect. It was the first church where I have been aware of private pews. I am not sure if they are still used but some did have a private sign on them. There was a sheet over one with the comment that the church maid used to cover all private and reserved pews after service so any smuts from the fire used to heat the church would not land in the pew and mark 'Sunday clothing'.

We picked up our audio guides then walked around the Abbey ruins . I was not aware of the previous history here. There is evidence of human inhabitation in this area since 657 AD when a well known Anglo-Saxon religious community was based here. The Abbess was called Hild and she was in charge of 2 communities. There was a nunnery but also a monastery under her control. The next Abbess was the former Queen, and her daughter, St Alfred (sp), followed her. The Venerable Bede wrote quite a lot about the community at the time.

There is no real information about why the community disappeared although there have been suggestions of a Viking raid. Then a Benedictine community started here and over a number of years it grew and a magnificent abbey was built. The audio guide gave us details of the abbey over the years and also had voiceovers based on the life of a brother at the time. There were 20 brothers in residence and they would have attended 8 services per day.

At the time of the dissolution of the monasteries one of Henry 8th friends took over the priors house and built Chomley House around it. He used many of the stones from the abbey in the building. This is now the English Heritage visitors centre for the Abbey and had extra displays inside. They included many archeological items found on the site.

We walked back to the BnB along other equally interesting streets. There was an area called the Shambles which had a narrow street like the Shambles in York . There are lots of narrow lanes but we especially noted Argument Lane and took the obligatory photo.

After a break we went out in the car for drive around the area. We set off for Robin Hood bay but the parking costs puy us off so we just drove in the direction of Scarborough finding caches on the way. The caches took us for a couple of walks as well as finding us a nice pub for afternoon tea. We started to recognise the style of a group of local cachers who usually put their cachers in a camo bag often with an interesting item inside. We found a bird a cat and a skull (Yorick). We found the cricket grounds at Scarborough then set off to do a triangular route. By then it was getting late so after doing all the caches in one small village we stopped for tea at a country pub.

On the way home we did a couple more caches as we went past Horcum hole, the place the Yorkshire man we met in France told us we must visit. The legend is that Horcum Hole was created when a giant named Wade, who was in fact a Saxon chief, grabbed a 'handful' of earth to throw at his wife, Bell - the soil missed its target and landed to form the 800ft high hill of Blakey Topping which lies about a mile to the east. We also visited the plaque which commemorates the "Incident at Bannial Flatt Farm" - the site of the first enemy plane to crash on English soil in the Second World War.

We found a car park about 20m from the BnB and John had time to check some cricket on the internet, while I completed some blogs and logged the days’ haul of about 15 caches (not quite a record for us).