… And suddenly we were in Yorkshire again, where our trip together had begun. It was almost over. But then, Yorkshire is a big county… we had things still to see and another night before we headed back to Sheffield. The weather had curiously turned bleaker and colder the further south we went and there was more snow in Yorkshire than we had seen in Scotland save on the distant mountains.

We turned once more to the coastal roadwhose western counterpart had served us so well through Cumbria and Scotland and headed southwards to the tiny village of Lythe, just north of Whitby. Friends had told us there were Saxon remains there in the church, though we had little idea what to expect. We had seen a couple of pictures, but were, perhaps, less than enthusiastic as we squelched through the mud of the farm track where we had parked and walked through the biting wind to the tiny church of St Oswald. In fact, what we expected was to find that it was locked.

We were, however, in luck, and by a curious coincidence, the couple just leaving had signed the visitors’ book and were from the same district in Sheffield as my companion. I would urge anyone visiting the old churches to sign the books… funding for the preservation of many of these historic sites can be influenced by the number of visitors.

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