The National Trust Coastal Centre — Attraction in Stainton Dale

We travelled 1h 45m to get here and the aim was to see seals. My son 9ys has a particular interest. On our way to see the seals passing through the golf course and reading warning sign it would have been nice to have known how bad the decent down the cliff really was before driving. We got so far down the cliff before having to turn back the underfoot mud made it dangerous due to wet weather. Unfortunately we didn't get to see any seals. Plenty of other people managed. We also spoke to a wildlife volunteer on our way down. He was understandably upset after telling me the last 2days one poor seal had to be put to sleep because it broke its jar, a member of pubic got to close and sadly the seal got spooked and hurt its self. He said their are to many people getting to close and ignoring warnings. I feel this area could be managed alot better, yes its open to the public to freely go and see the seal. I feel if it was managed by the national trust/ local council or wildlife conservation group they would be able to manage the numbers of people restricting numbers of people visiting. If you could book a visit with a fully qualified quide and pay a fee to visit. This would be much better for the seals and the fee paid would help to fund the centre and help and sick seals that needed a seal...

The visitor centre is very small but nicely run, staff are very friendly and helpful and there is a very nice tearoom there.

Very helpful with the Tramper hire and making sure I was happy with it before setting off on a really nice trip along the coast. It is a very steep track but it is pretty well maintained and the views are really worth it.

The upper part of this is filled with sheep (and lovely lambs when we were there) so watch where you tread!

We almost cancelled our trip there today as the weather was bad on our drive up from Hunmanby but amazingly the weather cleared up when we got there and we had a great time for just short of 2 hours - VERY glad we went anyway despite the weather!

Definately somewhere to come back to another time - and...

We parked opposite here to walk down to South Cheek to see the seals which was great fun. Sadly no luck fossil hunting. Then we went to the tea room for refreshments.

I do think you need to be aware of a two things;

The walk down to the beach gets progressively steeper, looser and muddier as you descend. Even in summer wearing a pair of trainers with decent grip is advisable. It took us about 40 mins to walk back to the car from the beach and due to the conditions on the path it wasn’t much quicker going down.

The tide seems to come in very quickly so you need to be aware of what’s happening. Also based on our experience today ‘get off the beach’ time seems to be about two hours before high tide...