Whitby Survival Guide.
Right, well Whitby is up in deepest darkest Yorkshire, on the coast. You can get there by train, there’s a train station in whitby, by coach or if you don’t fancy an extended journey grab a short flight up to leeds and then coach/train down to Whitby.
Being in London though, you should be able to find other goths heading that way and blag a lift in a car if you help out with petrol. Probably end up cheaper if not the same as coach (about £20-£30) only with better company and the opportunity for random fun at service stations.
Tickets for the weekend, I think have gone up to about £42, which given the line-up above, is a real disappointment. April they had some problems with the council changing capacity on them, so some people had to stand outside and wait for people to leave (but they turned up 3 hours after it started). I was hoping they’d be putting on an awesome show to make up for that, but alas not, not too many great bands.
Some people however, go without getting the tickets to see the bands and go for the people and the shopping.
Whitby itself is a beautiful fishing village, fairly quiet. The Goth Weekend is on twice a year, once for Halloween, the other in April. The WGW organised activities extend to the daily stalls which are on in the pavillion and also a couple of the hotels and in the evening there’s the Bands, again at the pavillion, with bar and “mingling area” should you just want to look gorgeous in your costume and meet people.
This is by no means the only events on, when we went in april one of the bands in this line up, Neon Zoo, played a free gig in a pub during the day.
The Dracula society has a steam train ride, the people on the WGW site organise meet ups and events, we got taken for a walk around the cliffs early one morning… great hang over cure.
There’s boat trips, a dracula experience museum, and of course the dramatic Abbey that sits perched on top of the 199 steps, perfect for rolls and rolls of pictures of you lamenting up against various bits of ruined gothic architecture.
There’s lots of shops in the main town (be warned it is all quite steep, do your drinking AFTER shopping) including main charity shops which put all their black on seperate rails, just for the goths. The two main goth pubs, The Elsinore and the Little Angel are next to each other and most people just hang around in a big group outside both, chatting.
There are also a couple of club nights on over the weekend some playing goth/ebm, others 80’s… so a decent enough mix.
Plenty of alchohol, music, things to buy and great people… what more could you want?
How about the charity football match : Whitby FC Vs The Goths…. always entertaining.
