Secrets and shipwrecks

In a rock pool at the base of a cliff, Sean Baxter has discovered something: an innocuous yellow brick, rounded at the edges but with the inscription V&D faintly visible. It's the sort of thing you would normally walk past but on this stretch of wild coast everything carries a story with it.

"This was cargo on the SS Clementine," Baxter says, squinting out to sea. "It was lost in 1924 and, at some low tides, you can see the wreck. Not today though."

Strange that the unfortunate ship should hold on to its secrets for almost a century then suddenly release them but this coast has many mysteries. We are less than two kilometres south of the fishing village of Staithes, a huddle of whitewashed cottages squeezed between towering cliffs on the North Yorkshire coast. Baxter has been fishing here for more than 35 years, learning the ropes as a teenager from old men who had inherited traditions largely unchanged since Viking times. In the village's delightfully quirky museum, among the vast collection of archive photographs, Baxter is there as a young man, carrying fishing lines down to the harbour on his head.

"In its heyday Staithes had around 50 sea captains," he tells me. "Most famously, of course, Captain Cook came here as a boy to work in a chandler's shop but then caught sea fever and left." The shop is long gone but the cottage is still inhabited, unlike many others that have become holiday lets.

Baxter and his wife, Patricia, are on a mission to revive the village and communicate how fascinating this little harbour and coast are. Their weekend breaks are full of a sense of enthusiasm and discovery, plus the benefit of long experience - Patricia's family have been fishing here since at least the 17th century. Participants stay in a fisherman's cottage next door to the Baxters' home, a few yards away from the harbour and a couple of good pubs, one of which, the Cod and Lobster, is so close to the sea it has been washed away twice. Winter, I reckon, is the ideal time to visit, with its huge dramatic skies and all sorts of discoveries to be made on the foreshore.

"Look at this!" Baxter has spotted something in the rock pool where the brick was lying. It's a fat, slug-like creature that when rolled in his hands squirts out a purple dye. "It's called a sea hare and the dye is what was used to stain the sails of Cleopatra's ships." He carefully returns the creature to the water. His knowledge of this coast is augmented by years of experience working as a fisheries adviser around the world.

We move on, picking our way across a flat area of rock, the scar that is revealed at the base of the cliff only at low tide. The rock dates back to the Jurassic period and, as we soon start to discover, is packed with fossils. Helped by Baxter's teenage sons, Luke and Thomas, our six-year-old, Maddy, fills her pockets with ammonites and horn-like belemites. New finds turn up here in abundance, particularly during the stormier winter months.

When we pause for coffee, our seat is a stratum of fossilised tree roots. The sheer quantity of fossils is staggering, far greater than I've seen elsewhere. And further along, among the sandy tide-shadows of rocks, Baxter shows us where to find small pieces of jet, a semi-precious stone that is fossilised monkey-puzzle trees.

We hunt for our lunch. Out at the ends of the scars, where the sea is thrashing and boiling, there are a few of Baxter's creels, which we retrieve from the waves. Inside are several lobsters, some undersized and thrown back but a few large enough for lunch. Maddy plucks up courage and holds one of them despite Baxter showing the impressive array of wrist scars that years of wrestling with lobsters have left. There is another treat too: Baxter has left a couple of baited shore lines out overnight and we haul in a coley, one of the cod family.