Mina's diary: 24 July. Whitby.
Lucy met me at the station. She looks sweeter and lovelier than ever. After that we drove up to the house at the Crescent where her family are renting rooms. Whitby is a lovely place. The little river, the Esk, runs through a deep valley, which gets wider as it comes near the harbour. A great viaduct runs across the valley, and when you look through it, the view somehow seems further away than it really is.

The valley is beautifully green, and the sides are so steep that when you are on the high land on either side you look right across the whole valley. You only know it is there if you are near enough to see down. On the side of the valley furthest away from us is the old town. The houses are all red-roofed, and they seem to be piled up one over the other, like the pictures we see of houses at Nuremberg.

Right over the town is the ruin of Whitby Abbey, the old church which was destroyed by the Vikings. It is the scene of part of the poem 'Marmion', where the girl was killed. It is a most noble ruin, extremely big, and full of beautiful and romantic bits. There is a legend that a ghost, a white lady, is seen in one of the windows. Between the Abbey and the town there is another church, the parish church. There is a big graveyard around it, all full of tombstones.