Runswick Bay is a small village on the cliffs north of Sandsend and Whitby. There is a small pay and display car park near the beach which does get full on busy days. There are one or two places where you can eat. Many of the cottages perched on the cliff side are second homes so the place can be very quiet in winter. The beach at Runswick Bay is quite long but some of it is quite coarse and stony. There are various small streams running across the beach. There is an RBRB rescue boat in the old RNLI lifeboat house. This charity was founded in 1982 after the RNLI moved to near bye Staithes.
Runswick Bay is famous for its fossils particularly ammonites.

Runswick cliffs, fossils and fishing

To the North of Runswick bay there are rocks and very unstable cliffs. You can hear and see stones falling almost continuously down the cliff. There are also small caves in the cliffs in places which are probably where jet was mined. Do not go in them they are very unstable. Do not go close to any of these cliffs. It is dangerous! There are fossils in the rocks on the shoreline and among the pebbles.You can also get cut off by the tide. There are all sorts of strange marks in the bed rock with most being recognizable fossils but what on earth are those wriggly lines. Fossilised worm holes?
There is a small boat park near the car park with small fishing boats launched off the beach. Runswick was a fishing village but there are no commercial boats there now. They are used for pleasure fishing including putting a few crab pots in. One particular boat caught my interest as I used to own it many years ago and it was called Our Cath. It was lovely to see it again and to know it was still being used. I have caught many cod in this boat and used to venture well out to sea on calm days to the wrecks which litter the Yorkshire coast .