If you follow the 182-mile Coast to Coast hiking path through the Lake District, Yorkshire Dales and North York Moors, eventually you’ll reach the North Sea, with Robin Hood’s Bay clinging precipitously to the sea cliffs. This immensely picturesque village was once renowned as a smuggler’s cove. Today it’s still much loved for its rockpooling tidal beach, extremely steep cobbled high street and huddles of pretty fishermen’s cottages. There’s an end-of-the-world feel, which was perfectly relayed onto the big screen when the village and its surrounding coastal headlands played a starring role in the 2017 film Phantom Threads starring Daniel Day Lewis and set in the 1950s.
Ambling along the windswept headland, as Daniel Day Lewis and his crew did, is a popular pastime in the area. Down the steep slope to the village at the bottom, there are also well-preserved old-fashioned shopfronts housing fossil shops, ice cream parlours and cafes. The pub where fashion designer Reynolds Woodcock (played by Daniel Day Lewis) goes for a meal and meets waitress Alma Elson, his future model and muse, in the Victoria Hotel, perched right on the edge of the village with big windows looking out to sea.
Robin Hood’s Bay is located five miles south of Whitby and 15 miles north of Scarborough.
