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-morning, though it is not an especially big one. No recent storms, so expect a picked-over beach.
Safe window: 8:20am – 11:20am
Leave the beach by 11:20am — the tide will cut off your route back.
Why: Low tide falls mid-morning, though it is not an especially big one. No recent storms, so expect a picked-over beach.
9° · overcast · Low tide: 10:20am (1.4 m), 10:36pm (1.4 m) · Wind up to 9 km/h · Waves 0.4 m
Safe window: 8:51am – 11:51am
Leave the beach by 11:51am — the tide will cut off your route back.
Why: Low tide falls mid-morning, though it is not an especially big one. No recent storms, so expect a picked-over beach.
10° · overcast · 1mm rain · Low tide: 10:51am (1.5 m), 11:10pm (1.5 m) · Wind up to 15 km/h · Waves 0.9 m
No safe daylight window
Why: Rough seas with big waves forecast — stay off the beach today.
8° · overcast · 2mm rain · Low tide: 11:23am (1.7 m), 11:45pm (1.6 m) · Wind up to 36 km/h · Waves 2.6 m
Safe window: 9:55am – 12:55pm
Leave the beach by 12:55pm — the tide will cut off your route back.
Why: Recent heavy seas should have washed fresh material onto the beach. Low tide falls at lunchtime, though it is not an especially big one.
6° · clear · Low tide: 11:55am (1.9 m) · Wind up to 30 km/h · Waves 2.3 m
Safe window: 10:31am – 1:31pm
Leave the beach by 1:31pm — the tide will cut off your route back.
Why: Recent heavy seas should have washed fresh material onto the beach. Low tide falls at lunchtime, though it is not an especially big one.
8° · mostly clear · Low tide: 12:21am (1.7 m), 12:31pm (2.1 m) · Wind up to 22 km/h · Waves 1.2 m
Safe window: 11:11am – 2:11pm
Leave the beach by 2:11pm — the tide will cut off your route back.
Why: Recent heavy seas should have washed fresh material onto the beach. Low tide falls at lunchtime, though it is not an especially big one.
8° · overcast · Low tide: 1:01am (1.9 m), 1:11pm (2.3 m) · Wind up to 20 km/h · Waves 0.5 m
Safe window: 11:59am – 2:59pm
Leave the beach by 2:59pm — the tide will cut off your route back.
Why: Recent heavy seas should have washed fresh material onto the beach. Low tide falls at lunchtime, though it is not an especially big one.
9° · mostly clear · Low tide: 1:47am (2.1 m), 1:59pm (2.5 m) · Wind up to 28 km/h · Waves 1.4 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