From the broken
walls and towers of the old Norman castle the views over the ravines on
either hand--for the castle stands on a lofty promontory in a sea of
foliage--are entrancing; and after seeing the astoundingly brilliant
colours with which autumn paints these trees, there is a tendency to
find the ordinary woodland commonplace. The narrowest and deepest gorge
is hundreds of feet deep in the shale. East Row Beck drops into this
canon in the form of a water-fall at the upper end, and then almost
disappears among the enormous rocks strewn along its circumscribed
course. The humid, hot-house atmosphere down here encourages the growth
of many of the rarer mosses, which entirely cover all but the
newly-fallen rocks.
We can leave the woods by a path leading near Lord Normanby's modern
castle, and come out on to the road close to Lythe Church, where a
great view of sea and land is spread out towards the south. The long
curving line of white marks the limits of the tide as far as the
entrance to Whitby Harbour. The abbey stands out in its loneliness as
of yore, and beyond it are the black-looking, precipitous cliffs ending
at Saltwick Nab.
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