It was only when I planned my route for the day that I realised that at some stage yesterday I had crossed the county border into North Yorkshire. I got chatting to a group of women in a cafe on the Esplanade, who seemed less convinced. As far as all but two of the group were concerned, they lived in Redcar & Cleveland, and were unhappy when the local authority had added ‘on the Yorkshire Coast’ to Redcar’s town signs. But two held their ground, arguing that the town’s annual ‘Yorkshire Day’ events was evidence enough that they were all Yorkshire women.

I retreated from the debate, keen to avoid offending either camp. But the confusion only resurfaced in my own mind an hour or so later, when I cycled past a prominent road sign welcoming me to North Yorkshire.

NCN Route 1 stays on higher ground as far as possible, and I looked down on the delightful beach at Saltburn from the grand, Victorian Marine Parade. I passed the entrance to the Cliff Tramway, the oldest water-powered funicular tramways in the country, and couldn’t resist taking a single journey down and back up again.

Passing Staithes after another hour, I felt another wave of nostalgia overcome me, as I remembered yet another childhood summer holiday. We had rented one of the small cottages on the hillside road above the harbour. I was probably only around six or seven at the time, and so remember very little about the holiday itself. But I remember that the electricity meter in the cottage demanded regular feeds of either 2p or 5p coins, and we never seemed to have enough of them.

1st family hols I remember was here. I remember a local girl calling my Dad 'Kojak', and also the electricity meter! pic.twitter.com/enH7xjSpV5

— Edward Peppitt (@thebeaconbike) July 22, 2015

I paid for my detour with a long climb back up the hill, but it was worth it. Staithes is a beautiful little town, and certainly another to put on my list to revisit.

Just before Whitby, the main coast road passes through Sandsend, where the sweet little Wits End Cafe alongside the seafront car park served a wonderful crab sandwich. On the other side of the seafront road is a substantial balconied Edwardian building that must once have been an elegant hotel. There’s not a lot else to Sandsend, apart from miles of unspoilt, sandy beach.

In Whitby I made straight for the harbour, where there are no fewer than four lighthouses, one on each of the four piers.

Whitby Harbour

Whitby was a significant fishing port for hundreds of years, but its harbour was developed during the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries from shipbuilding and the mining of alum shale, a kind of clay slate. Whitby Harbour is also from where Captain Cook set out in HMS Endeavour on his voyage of discovery to Australia in 1768.

The current lighthouse on the West Pier dates to 1831, and replaced an earlier light when the pier was extended.

It was designed by Francis Pickernell, the engineer to the Harbour Trustees, and has a fluted Doric column, with an octagonal lantern, and an octagonal lead domed roof, with a weathervane on top. The tower is eighty-three feet tall, and mounted on a square stone base. It displayed a flashing green light which was visible for five miles, but after a pair of pier extensions, with new lights, were built in 1914, its light was only displayed when a vessel approached the harbour.

The lighthouse on the East Pier is shorter, at fifty-five feet tall, and dates to 1855. Its tower comprises a circular stone column, and it has a hexagonal lantern mounted on top. It displayed a fixed green light which was visible for eight miles. It, too, was deactivated following the opening of the pier extensions in 1914.

The 1914 pier extensions each have a small lighthouse. Both have circular lanterns mounted on wooden pyramidal supports. The lantern on the West Pier extension is green, and shows a fixed green light which is visible for three miles.

The one on the East Pier extension is red, and shows a fixed red light, also visible for three miles. Both extensions are currently the subject of a programme of repair and restoration.

Four lights at Whitby harbour seems a little excessive wouldn't you say? Rather splendid though! #beaconbike pic.twitter.com/P72mm4FWJO

— Edward Peppitt (@thebeaconbike) July 22, 2015

High on the headland on the East Cliff, overlooking the town, stand the haunting, imposing ruins of Whitby Abbey. Founded in 657 by St Hilda, it has had many famous residents over the centuries, including the poet Caedmon, as well as providing the inspiration for Bram Stoker, author of Dracula. It was recently named Britain’s most romantic ruin, and is reckoned to be one of England’s most important archaeological sites.

For only the second time on the journey, Google Maps let me down, suggesting that my best route to Whitby High lighthouse was via the 199 Abbey steps. I had got about a third of the way up, in a long queue of tourists making their pilgrimage, before giving up and making my way back through the town to the main road. Irritated that it would add time I didn’t have to my journey, in fact I passed the front entrance of the Abbey about twenty minutes later. Now that I had made it onto the headland, the last couple of miles to the lighthouse were almost entirely flat.

Whitby High

Whitby Lighthouse (known as Whitby High so as not to cause confusion with the Whitby Harbour light) was built by Trinity House in 1858, and was originally one of a pair of leading lights marking nearby Whitby Rock.

Designed by consultant engineer James Walker, the two towers were aligned north to south, and showed fixed lights over the hazardous Whitby Rock. The lower of the two lighthouses had an octagonal tower, with lantern and gallery. It was deactivated in 1890, after a more efficient light was installed in the higher lighthouse. It has since been demolished.

The high light has a white-painted, octagonal tower, forty-four feet tall, with octagonal lantern and gallery. Originally fitted with paraffin lamps, the lighthouse was electrified in 1976 and automated in 1992. The original keepers’ cottages are now available as holiday lets.

Nowadays, it displays a flashing white and red isophase light, every five seconds, with the white light visible for eighteen miles and the red light for sixteen miles. The Lighthouse was automated in 1992.

Whitby lighthouse. Gorgeous! And first outing for my new corporate sponsor's orange shirt! Thanks Paul Uttley! pic.twitter.com/dfhGQjKWe4

— Edward Peppitt (@thebeaconbike) July 22, 2015

Almost all of the last twenty miles to Scarborough followed ‘The Cinder Track’, a former coastal railway so named because of its cinder track ballast. The line ran between 1885 and 1965. It’s a beautiful route, but before joining it, I was alarmed to read a review of it, which warned that it was in need of considerable maintenance, and that a better name for it would be the ‘Puddles, Mud and Stones Track’. I persevered, and was glad that I did. It was back-breaking at times, but it was worth every wince and jolt of pain.

Scarborough

Scarborough is an elegant town of Georgian and Victorian buildings, with large green parks, a clifftop castle and a sheltered harbour that dates to the eleventh century. The harbour was enlarged considerably in the middle of the eighteenth century with the construction of outer piers. The Vincent Pier, built by William Vincent in 1752, had a circular brick lighthouse on it from 1806, which was raised in height in 1843. It displayed a light that was visible for four miles.

In 1914, German gunboats bombarded the town and the lighthouse was so badly damaged that it had to be demolished. Its replacement wasn’t built until 1931, another white-painted, circular brick tower, forty-nine feet tall, with an octagonal lantern room with a domed roof. It displays a white isophase light, at five second intervals, visible for four miles, as well as two fixed green lights pointing seawards.

There are simple lights on the end of both inner piers. On the East Pier is a green flashing light mounted on a short mast. There are also two fixed red lights on the roof of a hut on the West Pier.

The Beacon Bike reaches Scarborough, home to this rather grand harbour lighthouse #beaconbike pic.twitter.com/ZdTVF4h8vM

— Edward Peppitt (@thebeaconbike) July 22, 2015

My original plan was to stay just outside Scarborough with my friend Rita, whom I had first met at a book publishing seminar I ran a decade or so previously. But I had arrived on the only day in July that she was not at home, so instead we agreed to meet up for lunch at the lighthouse at Flamborough the next day.

I booked a room in a terraced Victorian guest house in one of the residential streets behind the cricket ground. At dinner I met George, a cheerful old man in his eighties, who came to watch at least one of the two County Championship cricket games played at Scarborough’s North Marine Road ground each year. He’d had a good day, as Yorkshire had beaten Worcestershire, their fifth successive County Championship victory, with Jonny Bairstow making an unbeaten seventy-four from just fifty-one balls, hitting nine fours and three sixes. There weren’t many things I’d rather have been doing that day than cycling the North Yorkshire coast, but watching Jonny’s innings would certainly have been one of them.

Scarborough lighthouse lit by the late evening sun #beaconbike pic.twitter.com/MeN7ezF2Ye

— Edward Peppitt (@thebeaconbike) July 22, 2015