Bram Stoker's holiday home beckons after a busy month at the Fringe - Susan Morrison

Bram Stoker’s Dracula was first published 127 years ago on 26 May 1897, featuring the dramatic ruins of Whitby’s 13th century gothic abbey

Many people, on meeting us, think that a Yokshireman would be the sort of person to sweat the details of the holiday plans. They would be wrong. He frequently doesn’t know where he's going until I tell him.

Mind you, once he gets a travel plan in his head, it's like watching Captian Cook plotting the South seas.

I think he resents Google Maps. Gone are the days when he would vanish behind the AA Roadmap for days at a stretch, emerging only to announce that the A984 was probably a better route than the A765, but only if we were going down the M6. Of course we were. That’s the road to Tebay.

Fringe over, and it was time to take a little break. Others seek the sun, but nothing pleases me more than a bit of beach, a lifeboat museum and a pile of ruins. And so to Whitby, Bram Stoker's holiday home.

Whitby might well be the only place in Britain that goes uphill more relentlessly than Edinburgh.

Trust me, living and working in the Old Town fair fits you up for the one hundred and ninety-nine steps up to the Abbey. You can spot slope-trained Scots bounding up the one-in-ten gradients like a mountain goat.

Thon Dracula character must have been a lot lighter on his feet than he looked. Mind you, hauling those coffins about would have kept him fit. I bet you he did it. One of the brides had probably booked the boat over.

Our cosy holiday home overlooked the railway, and at 9.45am (ish) the steam train blew its whistle.

Yes, there is a steam train service into Whitby. Steam trains have a curious effect on my husband. The whiff of garlic could startle Dracula into turning into a bat. The toot of a steam whistle and a Yorkshireman turns into a labrador.

He was up at that window like a dog eyeing up the last sausage roll in Greggs. Much attention had to be paid to the train. The train had to be watched, commented on and most importantly, timed. It was three minutes late leaving.

Can’t really sneer too much. Whitiby has a lifeboat museum. I think we can all guess who spent a happy hour or so sobbing at the sight of a self-righting RNLI boat, antique life jackets and careful reading of tales of unimaginable courage, followed by a happier exit through the gift shop to buy yet more fridge magnets, fold-up shopping bags and tee-shirts.

Well, you can never have enough RNLI branded mint humbugs. And we can never have too many lifeboats. Every boiled sweetie counts.

Of course, like Dracula and his earth-filled coffins, we were on my husband's ancestral soil. At least, that’s what I thought.

As we passed yet another shop selling seaside rock novelties, I asked if creating cunning facsimiles of full English Breakfasts was a Yorkshire ‘thing’.

“Perhaps in North Yorkshire”, came the unimpressed answer from the man from Sheffield.

Take that, crafty Northern rock artisans.