Whitby’s Goth the lot (just no zip wires, ta)
HITBY is my favourite seaside town. It’s handsome, historic, has winding cobbled streets with fascinating shops, an ancient abbey and great fish and chips.
Now some company wants to spoil its ambience by erecting 340metre zip wires from the cliffs to the harbour. I mean, come on. In Whitby?
John Freeman, chairman of Whitby and District Tourism Association, is the voice of sanity. “We are not Blackpool or Scarborough and don’t want to go down that road. It is totally out of keeping with the image Whitby wishes to project.”
This is the place where Captain James Cook started his sea life of adventure as a merchant navy apprentice, and where Dracula landed from the wreck of the ship Demeter. He jumped from the ship in the shape of a big dog and ran up the 199 steps to St Mary’s Church.
Which is the reason Goths gather there twice a year – Covid permitting – to dress up in their finery, visit the churchyard and celebrate one of the great creepy creations of literature.
The town loves the Dracula connection for the tourists but St Mary’s is not so keen to have all these fans wandering the church grounds looking for his grave. They have a point. St Mary’s was founded in the 12th century and is a delightful Alice In Wonderland church, which is appropriate, because Lewis Carroll was a frequent visitor to the town.
Walks on the beach are thought to have inspired him to write The Walrus And The Carpenter.
Church authorities have published a leaflet explaining to Goths there is no Dracula grave. Bram Stoker created the character while on an extended stay in Whitby in 1890. Town traders hope this revelation will not deter fans from returning. I’m sure it won’t because the legend is so entrenched.
Unlike the Count.
A former rector at the church said he was once asked which was Dracula’s grave and replied: “You have more chance of finding Bugs Bunny buried here.” To which the fan said: Don’t be silly, Bugs Bunny isn’t real.”
I had my own brush with the
Count many years ago when I visited St Mary’s with a colleague. A chap working there kindly showed us a grave which, he said, was where the dog escaping the shipwreck had gone to ground, to later emerge as Dracula. It made a good line, I thought, as I took notes.
Then we went down the 199 steps for a pint in front of a roaring fire at The Duke of York pub. Which is when I realised I had lost my very expensive fountain pen. I went back up the steps, looking for a glint of gold, all the way to the churchyard. There it was: on Dracula’s grave. Had the Count been having a laugh?
So with all that history, and a strange encounter, I’m glad there will be no 340-metre zip wire. Dracula wouldn’t have needed one, in any case. He could fly down as a bat, or run down as a dog. Apparently. If he existed.