IT’S a Bank Holiday today. Some of you, keen to stretch your legs after weeks in lockdown, will no doubt be heading out to the seaside or up into the hills. Others, still wary of the virus, will be more reluctant. Photos of beach crowds at Bournemouth didn’t help.

If you are reluctant to go out (or unable to, for example because you’re self-isolating) - well, we have just the thing: another day out in pictures, thanks again to photographer Nikki Bowling.

Nikki, from York, specialises in wedding, portrait and property photography. But while we’ve been shut up during lockdown, the 44-year-old’s photos of her favourite Yorkshire beauty spots have proved popular. Last week, she took us on a pictorial visit to Flamborough and Bridlington. This week, she heads further up the coast, to Whitby, Runswick Bay and Staithes.

It’s a part of Yorkshire that she’s less familiar with - when she was a child, her parents always took her to Bridlington when they headed for the seaside. But since Nikki’s 11-year-old daughter Mia became interested in fossils, they have discovered the wilder coast further north. Runswick Bay is great for fossils, Nikki says. You can find belemnites (fossils of the shells of squid-like creatures who lived 100 million years ago) and larger nodules that, when cracked open, can reveal interesting finds.

Whitby has lots to do, Nikki says - shops, arcades, fish & chips, the pier, the climb up the lighthouse with its views over the beach. And the drive there over the Moors is wonderful, too.

But it is the quieter Staithes and Runswick Bay that she and her family particularly love. You can go crabbing off the pier, she says. “Take a net, dip it over the edge with some mackerel or a bacon sarnie. Haul it out, look at the crabs, then put them back. It’s great fun if you have a child...”

Stephen Lewis

See more of Nikki’s photos at nikkibowling.com