Britain’s new road trip that rivals the North Coast 500

The new Route YC covers 240 miles of Yorkshire countryside – and gives Scotland’s darling of the self-drive a run for its money

“Ey up, where you off?”
The destinations may be legion in such a vast county, but wherever you end up, the dialect on the roadside posters leaves you in no doubt that you are, without question, in Yorkshire. 
Route YC is God’s own country’s answer to Scotland’s North Coast 500 – a route I drove last year, discovering to my surprise that a driving holiday in Britain could actually be fun rather than a nightmare traffic jam with ne’er a parking space to be found. Now the same team that has given such a boost to Scotland’s self-drive experience has decided to do the same for Yorkshire. 
The route is 240 miles in total, but can be broken down into six separate drives that take in different parts of the coast and countryside, meaning you can either squeeze in as much of the county as possible, or opt for a more local path and full Yorkshire immersion.
Withernsea, the southernmost route, dips down to the Humber; while Whitby is the focal point at the opposite end of the county. There are suggested itineraries with three, five or seven-night stays on a variety of themes (food and drink, wildlife, walking or, if you’re really hardcore, ditching the car and getting on your bike).
Rather spoilt for choice, I decided to mix it up between Whitby, Scarborough and Bridlington, sticking mostly to the coast with the odd foray inland.
This, it turned out, was wise, because Yorkshire country villages really are not to be missed – slightly reminiscent of the Cotswolds but with a built-in down-to-earthness and a stone that glows more caramel than cream. They are surrounded by countryside that alternates between purple-heathered moorland and rolling downs, bordered by deep hedges, thick with flowers – I don’t think I’ve ever seen so many wild roses. Birds are everywhere. The sky is full of singing larks and, sitting in a sunny courtyard (at Ox Pasture Hall near Scarborough), scores of swallows and house martins swooped past me in their aerial ballet towards their nests in the eaves.
Truly devoted birders flock to Bempton near Bridlington, where they might spot a colony of bottle-nosed dolphins swim by beneath the thousands of seabirds nesting on the astonishing sheer cliffs: gannets, fulmars, kittiwakes, guillemots and – yes! – puffins.
It’s not only birds that go swoop in the night in these parts, however. Dracula is as undead as ever in Whitby. The clifftop Gothic ruins of Whitby Abbey inspired Bram Stoker and he based his title character on a book he found in the local library. The first church here was built by St Hild in the 7th century (the present ruins are from its third iteration), host of the Synod of Whitby in 664 when the method of calculating the date of Easter was finally, exhaustively settled.
St Hild was credited with banishing snakes from the clifftops – with the expelled serpents, curled into spirals, turned to stone on the sand below. In fact, these spirals are the ammonites that can be found across the beaches of North Yorkshire, where Dr Liam Herringshaw (@fossiliam), co-founder of the Yorkshire Fossil Festival (yorkshirecoast.rocks), takes fossil hunters for a stroll.
“This is the other Jurassic coast,” he explained. “The difference is that the beaches in these parts haven’t been picked bare, so there are still lots of fossils around.” 
They are scattered around Yorkshire’s famously sandy beaches, which often stretch for miles. Scarborough alone has two. But this is a working coastline, too, with plenty of harbours, fishing ports and boatbuilding. Captain Cook took four Whitby “colliers” (coal transporters) on his epic voyages to the South Seas and the Arctic.
A Yorkshireman himself, he was apprenticed to a captain in Whitby to learn his trade, and the house where he lived and worked is now a museum to Cook. Like much of Whitby, it’s a Georgian gem. This is not a town where you’ll get bored. You’re hard-pressed to find a shop that isn’t individually owned and, if you’re hungry, there’s plenty of local choice, too.
The Magpie Café is a local institution and there’s a queue down the street to prove it. Housed in a series of Georgian houses opposite the old fish market, its delightfully rambling interior is surely one of the most beautiful of any fish and chip restaurant. Calling it a fish and chip restaurant, though, is selling it far short. Not only do you find the freshest of fish here (never frozen), we’re not just talking about cod and haddock. There are Whitby crabs, Lindisfarne oysters, North Sea octopus and even the potatoes are a daily named variety (Yorkshire-grown Sagitta when I was there).
Whitby is also home to Botham’s of Whitby tea rooms, which serves not only the conventional afternoon tea, but Yorkshire versions, too. You could try the famous Whitby lemon bun (you don’t leave the lemon icing on top, you break the bun in half and rearrange it so the lemon is on the inside like a sandwich filling).
Or there again, there’s the ginger loaf, not to be confused with gingerbread, and best eaten, according to Jo Botham, with cheese as “we eat everything with cheese in Yorkshire”. Jo is the fourth generation of the family to run this ever-expanding business, but it all dates back to Elizabeth Botham (pronounced with a short “o”, as in “bothy”, rather than cricketer Ian), who married a widower with four children, had a further 10 of her own and, in her spare time, built up the business from scratch when the family fell on hard times. They make ’em tough in Yorkshire.
It’s quite tough walking down to the sea in the beautiful fishing village of Robin Hood’s Bay (the name has nothing directly to do with the Sherwood Forest outlaw, but may be related to a ship of the same name). There are steep slopes and steps and, fortunately, plenty of hostelries to break the journey.
Walking anywhere is a pleasure in Yorkshire and there are numerous hikes along the clifftops or along the beaches. There is plenty of inland walking, too, over moorland and in forests. At Falling Foss, for instance, you can walk through the woodland to the waterfall and discover the charming open-air tea garden there. As dingley a dell as anyone could wish for.
Suffice it to say, the UK road trip is alive and well – and not only in Scotland.
Anna Selby was a guest of Route YC. For more information, visit routeyc.co.uk
Stay along the route at Ox Pasture Hall Hotel near Scarborough (01723 365295; oxpasturehallhotel.com), which has standard doubles from £125, B&B, plus a spa and two superb chefs.
The immaculately Georgian North Ings in Robin Hood’s Bay (01947 880064; northings.co.uk) has rooms from £110, B&B; while the charming Farrier in Cayton (01723 861432; the-farrier.co.uk) has rooms from £200 B&B, based on two sharing.