My partner and I booked a holiday in Yorkshire for April 2018, so I decided to read “Dracula” as visiting Whitby was part of the itinerary for this package holiday.

While he ate fish and chips I walked up to the Abbey, then sat in the graveyard of St Mary’s Church below, imagining what it must have been like for Lucy Westonra (sic) to be bitten by Dracula.

I was also able to see where his ship was wrecked and he came ashore.

However, I didn’t go to or from the Abbey via the one hundred and ninety nine steps nor did I go inside St Mary’s, so they remained on my bucket list to do.

Last September I achieved both these goals by doing the same touring holiday, this time alone. I was worried about climbing the steps because of having arthritis in my left knee, but not only did I go up the steps, but I walked down again too, with a little pain that quickly disappeared at the bottom.

On the same trip we went to the Bronte parsonage at Howarth where I purchased Anne Bronte’s “Agnes Grey”. There was some considerable disruption to the trains going home and I read it from cover to cover on the journey and whilst waiting at stations for connections.