Cobles, crab pots and cliffside cottages: the working coast most visitors never look past the postcard for.
Most people who visit Staithes or Robin Hood’s Bay come for the same photograph. Steep cobbled lane, pastel cottages stacked above a harbour, a gull on a chimney pot. It is a good photograph. It is also the least interesting thing about either place.
Behind that view is a working coastline that has fished the North Sea for herring, cod and crab since before the word “tourism” existed. Some of these villages still send boats out. Others stopped decades ago but kept the buildings, the boat sheds and the stories that go with them. Both versions are worth knowing.
This is a Yorkshire fishing villages guide built around that working history: the cobles, the fleets, the lifeboat stations, and the six harbours where the industry still shapes what you see when you arrive.
Yorkshire Fishing Villages: Overview
Region: North Yorkshire coast, from the Cleveland border to Filey Bay.
Best for: Coastal walking, harbour history, seafood, a weekend away from the Dales crowds.
Getting there: A1(M) or A19 to Middlesbrough, then A174 for Staithes and Runswick Bay; A171 and A165 for Robin Hood’s Bay, Filey and Flamborough. Trains run to Whitby, Scarborough and Filey, with local buses covering the smaller villages.
Time needed: A long weekend covers all six comfortably; each village alone is a half-day visit
Staithes
Staithes sits in a gap in the cliffs so narrow that the main road stops above the village and everyone walks the last stretch down. That geography kept it fishing long after other Yorkshire harbours turned to tourism, because there was never room for much else.
The village became a significant fishing port in the 16th century, and by the 17th century, it was known specifically for herring, which were landed in numbers large enough to support its own curing and barrelling trade along the beck. Cobles, the flat-bottomed boats built for launching straight off an open beach, were built and repaired here for generations, and a handful of working boats still go out for crab and lobster today.
Staithes has another claim worth knowing. James Cook worked here as a shop apprentice for around eighteen months from 1745, aged sixteen, for a grocer and haberdasher named William Sanderson. The story goes that watching ships from the shop window turned him toward the sea rather than the counter. The timeline is well documented, and the village has held onto the connection since.
Walk the beach at low tide in winter, and the light does something the summer crowds never see: a flat grey glare off the wet sand that throws the cottage colours into sharp relief for about twenty minutes either side of low water.
Where to Stay: The Endeavour, a small guesthouse on Staithes’ High Street, named for Cook’s ship and a short walk from the harbour.
Worth Knowing: Newcastle University’s Co-Curate project confirms Cook’s apprenticeship dates and Sanderson’s name, cross-checked against the village’s own historical record.
Runswick Bay
Runswick Bay looks settled and permanent, which makes its history slightly unsettling once you know it. The original village stood closer to the sea until 1682, when a landslide took most of it overnight. No lives were lost, an outcome locals still put down to a funeral in the village that had emptied most of the houses that evening.
The survivors rebuilt slightly south, further up the cliffside, and the fishing carried on from there. That rebuilt village is the one you see today, terraced up a slope so steep that some back doors open directly onto the roof of the house below. It stayed a working fishing settlement for generations, sending cobles out for herring and white fish alongside Staithes and Whitby.
The beach itself is one of the widest on this stretch of coast, sheltered enough that boats could be hauled straight up onto the sand rather than needing a harbour wall, which is part of why the village survived here at all after the landslide.
Come at dusk in autumn, and the bay holds the last light long after the cliff top has gone dark, the sand turning the colour of old brass for a few minutes before the tide covers it.
Where to Stay: The Runswick Bay Hotel, on Hinderwell Lane above the village, with sea views over the bay it is named for.
Worth Knowing: The 1682 landslide is documented by Tees Valley Museums, and the rebuilt village’s location is corroborated independently by regional local history sources.
Robin Hood’s Bay
Robin Hood’s Bay is known for smuggling, and rightly so; that history is well told elsewhere. What gets skipped is that smuggling was never the village’s livelihood. Fishing was.
By 1838, Robin Hood’s Bay was recorded as one of four principal fishing villages on the Yorkshire coast, alongside Filey, Runswick and Staithes. Boats worked cod, halibut, skate, haddock and ling using cobles for inshore work and larger five-man boats further out, a division of labour that shaped who mended nets, who gutted and salted, and who sailed. An earlier account from the antiquarian John Leland recorded around twenty boats working from the bay, suggesting the fleet had grown substantially by the Victorian period.
The village ran its own lifeboat station from 1839, which was brought under RNLI management in 1881, in response to a coastline that has claimed boats and lives for as long as it has fed them. The station closed in 1931, not because the danger had gone but because Whitby’s lifeboat could reach the bay faster by then. The old boathouse still stands near the slipway, a reminder of a service the village funded and crewed itself for nearly a century.
Stand on the slipway at high tide in a stiff onshore wind, and you can hear why the village needed its own lifeboat: the sea hits the sea wall hard enough to send spray over the cottages closest to the water.
If you want the full smuggling story, Secret Britain’s dedicated Robin Hood’s Bay piece covers it properly. This is the other half of the village’s history: the one that actually paid the bills.
Where to Stay: The Bay Hotel, right on the slipway at The Dock, the traditional finishing point for the Coast to Coast walk and a genuine fisherman’s pub in its own right.
Worth Knowing: The 1838 fishing fleet record and Leland’s earlier boat count both come from the Scarborough Maritime Heritage Centre.
Flamborough
Flamborough Head is famous for its lighthouse and its chalk cliffs, but tucked beneath both is North Landing, a working fishing cove that has been in continuous use for far longer than the lighthouse has stood.
Fishing records at North Landing date back to the 13th century. By the 1890s, around eighty cobles were registered here, a substantial fleet for a cove with no proper harbour, just a shingle beach and a winch for hauling boats clear of the tide. Crab and lobster fishing has been the mainstay for generations, and pots are still stacked along the top of the beach between seasons.
The chalk cliffs that shelter the cove also make it one of the few places on this coast where you can watch working boats and nesting seabirds from the same spot between spring and midsummer, when guillemots and kittiwakes crowd the ledges above the fishing gear below.
Stand at the top of the slipway on a still morning, and you can hear the winch chain before you see it, a slow metallic clank carried up the cove long before the boat comes into view.
Where to Stay: The North Star Hotel, on North Marine Road in the village, a short walk from North Landing itself.
Worth Knowing: North Landing’s fishing history and coble numbers are documented by the Yorkshire Marine Nature Partnership, corroborated by regional heritage reporting.
Filey
Filey doesn’t get the same attention as Whitby or Scarborough, which is exactly why its fishing history has survived intact rather than being rebuilt around it.
The village’s lifeboat station was established in 1804 by a local committee, decades before the RNLI took it over in 1852. That makes Filey’s lifeboat tradition one of the older independent stations on this coast, born out of a fishing community that could not wait for a national body to organise rescue for it. The station is still active today, currently operating a B-class and a D-class inshore lifeboat, a working link between the fleet that first needed rescuing and the volunteers who still crew the launches.
Filey’s own fishing fleet worked from the beach in the same coble tradition as its neighbours, and the Coble Landing, the stretch of shingle where boats are still hauled up today, is named for exactly that. A handful of working boats land crab and lobster here through the summer season, sold straight off the beach on good days.
Early morning in July, the Coble Landing smells of diesel, salt and the previous night’s catch before the day trippers arrive, a working smell rather than a tourist one.
Where to Stay: White Lodge Hotel, on The Crescent overlooking Filey Bay, an easy walk down to the Coble Landing.
Worth Knowing: Filey’s lifeboat station history and current fleet are documented on Wikipedia’s Filey Lifeboat Station entry, consistent with the station’s own public record.
Skinningrove
Skinningrove is the village on this list most people have never heard of, and that is entirely because of what happened here after fishing declined, rather than anything wrong with its fishing history.
Skinningrove was a genuine working fishing village, with its own fleet and fish market, into the early 20th century. It ran alongside a substantial ironstone mining industry; the Loftus Mine operated here from 1859 to 1958, and for decades, Skinningrove was both a fishing and an industrial settlement. That combination is rare on this coast, where most villages picked one identity or the other.
The fishing side declined from the 1960s, driven by overfishing of North Sea stocks and by changing methods that favoured larger boats working from bigger harbours. What Skinningrove kept is memory: the village’s restored fishing coble, named “The Repus,” stands as a memorial to that working fleet.
It is a smaller, plainer village than Staithes or Robin Hood’s Bay, with none of the cottage-lined lanes that draw photographers to other places on this list. That is precisely why it belongs here: it shows what a Yorkshire fishing village looks like once the fishing has mostly stopped and nobody has rebuilt the story around tourism afterwards.
Where to Stay: Moonfleet Boutique Hotel, in the village square, the closest accommodation to Skinningrove itself.
Worth Knowing: Skinningrove’s fishing and ironstone history, including the Loftus Mine dates and “The Repus” memorial, is documented by Doc Brown’s Cleveland local history archive.
Practical Tips
- Tides matter more than parking on this coast. Check tide times before walking any beach route between villages; several stretches are completely cut off at high tide.
- Staithes and Runswick Bay both have steep final approaches on foot; leave the car at the top and expect a proper climb back up.
- Crab and lobster landed at North Landing and Filey’s Coble Landing sell fastest early in the day during summer; turn up before mid-morning if you want any.
- The AllTrails app has route data for the coastal path sections that link most of these villages, which is useful for checking distance and elevation before setting off.
- Parking in Staithes village itself is very limited; use the top car park rather than driving down.
- Skinningrove has no visitor infrastructure to speak of. Treat it as a working village, not an attraction, and you will get more out of it.
Responsible Visiting
These are working harbours, not stage sets. Keep dogs on leads near boat winches and fishing gear, don’t block slipways where boats are actively launching or hauling out, and buy from the boats and shops that depend on this trade rather than only photographing them. A village that still fishes needs customers as much as it needs visitors.
Reader Q&A
Are any of these villages still actively fishing today? Yes, though at a much smaller scale than a century ago. Staithes, Flamborough’s North Landing and Filey all still have working boats landing crab, lobster and some white fish. Skinningrove’s fishing fleet has effectively ended, and Robin Hood’s Bay and Runswick Bay now have little to no commercial fishing activity, though both retain their fishing-era buildings and slipways.
What is a coble? A coble is a flat-bottomed, high-bowed fishing boat traditionally built for launching directly off open beaches rather than from a sheltered harbour, developed specifically for this stretch of the Yorkshire coast where many villages had no natural harbour at all.
Can you walk between these villages along the coast? Most are linked by sections of the England Coast Path, though distances vary considerably and some stretches involve significant climbing. Staithes to Runswick Bay and Robin Hood’s Bay to Whitby are both popular half-day walking routes; check an up-to-date map before attempting longer stretches.
Is Robin Hood’s Bay actually connected to Robin Hood? No confirmed connection exists. The name’s origin is genuinely uncertain, and no credible historical record ties the legendary outlaw to this village.
Which village is best for seeing an actual working fishing fleet? Flamborough’s North Landing and Filey’s Coble Landing are the most reliable for spotting active boats and landed catch, particularly in the early morning during the summer season.
Is Skinningrove worth visiting if it no longer has an active fishing fleet? Yes, for a different reason than the other five villages. It shows the industrial and fishing history of this coast without any tourist polish, which makes it a useful contrast if you have already visited Staithes or Robin Hood’s Bay.
Where to Stay
The Endeavour, Staithes: a small guesthouse on the High Street named for Cook’s ship.
The Runswick Bay Hotel, Runswick Bay: sea views above the rebuilt cliffside village.
The Bay Hotel, Robin Hood’s Bay: on the slipway at The Dock, a genuine fisherman’s pub.
The North Star Hotel, Flamborough: a short walk from North Landing.
White Lodge Hotel, Filey: overlooking the bay, close to the Coble Landing.
Moonfleet Boutique Hotel, Skinningrove: the closest accommodation to the village itself.
For more coastal accommodation options further from the harbours, Secret Britain’s guide to hidden cabins and private retreats in Yorkshire also covers quieter inland options. Readers drawn to working fishing communities beyond Yorkshire may also want Secret Britain’s guide to Cornwall’s old fishing villages, a similar coast built around the same trade.
These six harbours still carry the weight of what they were built for, whether the boats go out every morning or only in memory now. The cliffs and the tide haven’t changed. What people came here to do has, and that difference is worth seeing for yourself.
