North Yorkshire, England

Robin Hood's Bay slipway (Way Foot)

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Launch — A steep, cobbled slipway built into the village sea wall at the foot of New Road, where the King's Beck discharges onto the beach.

Parking — Nearest parking is North Yorkshire Council's Station Road car parks in the upper village (207 and 74 spaces), roughly half a mile from the slipway down Bay Bank; charges apply March to October, free in winter.

Access — Reached on foot down Bay Bank, a steep (1-in-3), narrow and twisting road from the upper village; there is no public parking in the lower village, which has double yellow lines throughout, so vehicle access there is for loading and unloading only.

Season — The public toilet at the Old Coastguard Station café, at the top of the slip, is open in step with the café's seasonal hours, running shorter hours over winter. The village sea wall that carries the slipway is maintained under a long-term, phased repair programme recurring roughly every ten years, during which sections of the promenade and slipway can be cordoned off while work is under way.

Regulations — The foreshore is Crown Estate land, over which the Crown Estate gives general permissive consent for non-commercial public access, and the sea itself is subject to the public right of navigation on tidal water. Robin Hood's Bay is not one of North Yorkshire Council's three designated harbours (Whitby, Scarborough and Filey Coble Landing), so no harbour byelaws or launch charge apply here. The southern arm of the bay lies within the Robin Hood's Bay: Maw Wyke to Beast Cliff SSSI and the overlapping Beast Cliff Special Area of Conservation, and the coastline sits within the North York Moors National Park.

Robin Hood's Bay is a broad, curving bay on the North Yorkshire coast, roughly midway between Whitby, 6 miles to the north, and Scarborough, 15 miles to the south, enclosed by Ness Point to the north and Old Peak, near Ravenscar, to the south. This slipway launches into the bay's northern corner, at the foot of the village.

The bay's foreshore is a broad wave-cut platform of Lower Jurassic mudstone, exposed as a series of gently curving reefs known locally as scaurs, with patches of sand between them; what reads as open beach at high tide becomes a wide expanse of drying rock at low water. About 3 km south-south-east of the village, the coastal exposure at Wine Haven is the internationally ratified Global Boundary Stratotype Section and Point for the base of the Pliensbachian Stage of the Lower Jurassic, and the foreshore rocks on the north side of the bay are a well-known locality for ammonite fossils, especially after winter storms.

The slipway is built into the village's reinforced-concrete sea wall, which replaced an earlier, lower structure after erosion had taken more than 200 properties between 1780 and 1974.

Nearby

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The Old Coastguard Station

National Trust café and visitor centre at the top of the slip, with a customer toilet.

Website

The Cove

Café in a Grade II listed former chapel in the village centre.

Hooks House Farm Camping

Tent, caravan and motorhome pitches, open to individual bookings; the operator's site states it does not take group bookings.

Website

Middlewood Farm Holiday Park

Touring and camping pitches with holiday homes and glamping pods, open to the public.

Website

Conditions to check

Tidal flow

The tide floods quickly across this stretch of coast and can cut off the beach and the slipway.

Source

Shallow or rocky

Extensive rock reefs (scaurs) are exposed across the bay's foreshore at low tide.

Source

Other launches nearby

1 launch within 343m

343m south

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