Dracula's Whitby

1 From the car park, walk up the road towards the Abbey. Go right at the Cleveland Way sign, through a gate at the coastline and right along the path. From this part of the coast you can look out to sea and imagine the stormy night on which the Russian schooner Demeter, steered by a corpse lashed to the wheel and with its strange cargo of boxes of earth, approached Whitby harbour.

2 Near the National Trust Saltwick Nab sign leave the coast along a caravan site road and walk past the Galleon Inn. Where the Cleveland Way continues ahead, bear right, following the road. Just before a telegraph pole on the left, turn right to a waymarked stile and follow waymarks through three fields and over a stile on to the road. Cross it and turn left. At the end of the wall take a path to the right, following the line of telegraph poles and passing through a kissing gate into a lane. When the lane swings right go ahead beside a fence to a road. The town and harbour of Whitby are below: 'The River Esk runs through a deep valley which broadens out as it comes near the harbour? The houses of the old town are all red-roofed, and seem piled up one over the other anyhow,' wrote Stoker.

3 Cross and go down the road opposite, swinging right into The Ropery. Turn left down a cobbled slope to descend to a road. Turn right, then left just after the car park, past the Captain Cook Memorial Museum. At the end, turn left and go over the bridge then right along the quayside. Where the road bends left, turn left up a steep narrow lane, turning right at the top. When you reach the summit, East Crescent is to your left. Mina Murray was spending her summer in a house here with Lucy Westenra, one of Dracula's victims.

4 Take the steps on the right to find the Bram Stoker Memorial seat (the right-hand one on the terrace) from where the town is laid out below you. On the opposite cliff are the Abbey and the old parish church, where at night, in 'a narrow band of light as sharp as a sword cut' Mina saw Lucy. 'Something dark stood behind the seat where the white figure shone, and bent over it,' and she rushed headlong through the town to save her friend.

5 Descend through the Whalebone Arch on to the road. Turn left and go down to the harbour and back over the bridge. Just beyond, turn left down Sandgate and on to the Market Place, passing left of the Town Hall, and turning left along Church Street. As it bends right, go straight ahead to Tate Hill Pier. This is where Dracula's ship the Demeter crashed and from where 'an immense dog sprang up on deck? and jumped from the bow?', before running off up the street.

6 Follow the road round into Sandside, and climb the 199 steps, up which Mina ran to save Lucy from Dracula, to the churchyard. The seat where Mina saw 'something long and black bending over the half-reclining figure' of Lucy was on the north side of the church, in the shelter of the transept. Nearby, Stoker wrote, was the grave of a suicide, where the Count spent his days in Whitby. Leave the churchyard by the iron gate at the far end, bearing left past the Abbey to the car park.