Yorkshire · Directions ↗
Landslides regularly reshape this coast — your route back may not look like the map. Check your return route on the way out.
Today at Robin Hood's Bay
Quiet dayWhy: Low tide falls mid-afternoon, though it is not an especially big one. No recent storms, so expect a picked-over beach.
Safe window: 2:48pm – 5:48pm
Leave the beach by 5:48pm — the tide will cut off your route back.
Why: Low tide falls mid-afternoon, though it is not an especially big one. No recent storms, so expect a picked-over beach.
14° · overcast · 2mm rain · Low tide: 4:20am (2.5 m), 4:48pm (2.9 m) · Wind up to 30 km/h · Waves 1.9 m
Safe window: 4:23pm – 6:31pm
Leave the beach by 6:31pm — the tide will cut off your route back.
Why: Low tide falls towards evening, though it is not an especially big one. No recent storms, so expect a picked-over beach.
13° · overcast · 11mm rain · Low tide: 5:57am (2.5 m), 6:23pm (2.8 m) · Wind up to 34 km/h · Waves 1.7 m
Safe window: 7:06am – 8:14am
Leave the beach by 8:14am — the tide will cut off your route back.
Why: Low tide falls first thing, though it is not an especially big one. No recent storms, so expect a picked-over beach.
13° · drizzle · 14mm rain · Low tide: 7:14am (2.3 m), 7:32pm (2.6 m) · Wind up to 32 km/h · Waves 1.5 m
Safe window: 7:08am – 9:08am
Leave the beach by 9:08am — the tide will cut off your route back.
Why: Heavy rain in the last two days may have washed fresh material out of the cliffs. Low tide falls first thing, though it is not an especially big one.
11° · clear · Low tide: 8:08am (2.0 m), 8:22pm (2.2 m) · Wind up to 25 km/h · Waves 0.9 m
No safe daylight window
Why: Winds gusting around 103 km/h forecast — not a day to be under cliffs.
13° · drizzle · 49mm rain · Low tide: 8:51am (1.6 m), 9:04pm (1.9 m) · Wind up to 62 km/h · Waves 1.0 m
Safe window: 7:30am – 10:30am
Leave the beach by 10:30am — the tide will cut off your route back.
Why: A recent north-westerly blow should have brought fresh cliff material onto the beach. An early-autumn blow like this restocks beaches after the quiet summer. Low tide falls mid-morning, though it is not an especially big one.
10° · overcast · Low tide: 9:30am (1.3 m), 9:42pm (1.6 m) · Wind up to 42 km/h · Waves 1.0 m
No safe daylight window
Why: Winds gusting around 78 km/h forecast — not a day to be under cliffs.
16° · mostly clear · 2mm rain · Low tide: 9:07am (1.1 m), 9:20pm (1.4 m) · Wind up to 48 km/h · Waves 0.8 m
The wide rocky scaurs hold gravel-filled runnels between the rock fingers — that's where the tide concentrates ammonites and belemnites. Work outward from the slipway with the falling tide and start back long before it turns.
Ammonites hide inside rounded grey nodules — a coiled edge showing at the rim is the giveaway (take nodules home to split carefully; never hammer at the cliff). Jet is matt black, feather-light and warm to the touch; sea coal looks similar but heavier and dirtier. Belemnites are amber bullet-shaped rods. Free identification: Whitby Museum welcomes photo enquiries.
This coast is a protected site (SSSI). What does that mean?
Allowed: Collecting loose fossils from the beach is long-established and accepted here.
Never allowed: No digging into the cliffs or hammering in-place rock on this SSSI coast; leave the jet seams alone — commercial jet digging has damaged this coast.
Important finds: Report significant finds to Whitby Museum.
Rules can change — check locally before you collect.
Detailed location guide at UK Fossils →
Car parks at the top of the village; the bank down to the shore is on foot.
Toilets, cafés and pubs in the village; visitor centre.
Slipway onto wide rock ledges (scaurs); hunt the loose material between the ledges.
The wide flat scaurs flood deceptively fast and regularly trap people far from the slipway — start back at least three hours before high water. Very slippery ledges; unstable boulder clay cliffs.
Fossil Forecast