We are staying on the clifftop at Flamborough and the views are amazing! We have direct access to the cliffs and the many terraces full of seabirds, including guillemots, razorbills, gannets, shags, herring gulls and puffins.
On evening 1 we went out for a walk, taking our neighbour’s dog, Henry, with us. We ended up walking about 4 miles in the mud (it had been raining for a couple of days before we arrived). To get to the clifftop we have to walk through a field full of sheep belonging to the farm we’re staying on.
I’m not kidding you, I have never heard such noises from sheep! Ranging from normal baa’s to sounds like they’re barking and saying ‘no’ & ‘hear hear’. They’re clearly talking to each other as they’re quiet until people turn up 🙂
The following day we went out for a walk along the cliffs again. This time we turned left and walked about 3 miles to the RSPB centre. Along the cliffs here there are several platforms built for viewing the birds. It was a really nice walk, and even stayed dry for the majority of the time we were out! Calv enjoyed his cream tea at the café 🙂
We did find that, in contrast to everyone that we’ve encountered so far in Yorkshire, most of the serious bird-watchers we saw were actually quite unfriendly. They wouldn’t make eye contact at all, just kept their heads down and walked on past. We were pretty surprised by this. There were, of course, a couple of exceptions – like the guy we met on the clifftop on the 1st night who pointed out the puffins and lent us his scope to look through (I pretended I could see something, but I’m useless at looking through binoculars – and now I know, scopes as well!)
We did see puffins! They were at a distance in the crevices in the cliffs – but we could see them 🙂
We were trying to avoid using the car for a couple of days and so the next day, Saturday, we went out for another walk. This time we were aiming for the lighthouse that we can clearly see from the campsite. The owner told us that it’s a 4.8 mile walk along the clifftop.
So we headed the other way via Flamborough itself and along Lighthouse Road. It took forever – we never seemed to be getting any closer to the lighthouse! Along the way we passed the original lighthouse, which is now sited on the golf course and we couldn’t access it. There’s doubts about whether the flame was ever lit at the top, partly because passing ships refused to pay the toll to help pay for it.
We eventually made it to the new lighthouse on the head. There is a very nice café here, The Headland, an ice cream kiosk and public toilets. The lighthouse is still operational, but is fully automated. We took the tour, £4.40 per adult, which allowed us to go to the top and see the views from there.
We went down to the beach, all the way down! There were people in the water, clambering over the rocks and kayaking from the beach.
From here we took the cliff path, which afforded us some spectacular views on our walk back to the campsite.
On the way we found North Landing where we stopped for a drink in the bar at the Haven centre. On the beach there were tractors ready to pull the boats that were out on pleasure trips back out of the water, people kayaking; on the steep slipway up from the beach was a lifeboat house which you can visit as well as a boathouse. It was really busy here as well!
A little further along the cliff was Thornwick Bay, where there is a café and limited access to the beach.
You have to be careful on these beaches as it would be really easy to get cut off as the tide comes in – from the safety of the clifftop we did see a number of people scrambling back around the base of the cliffs to beat the incoming water. It concerned us a little, but they seemed to know what they were doing…
So we’d had 3 days of lots of walking and lots of fresh air! Very enjoyable, but now our feet were hurting.
Therefore the car came back into use on Sunday with a dribble along the coast as far as Withernsea – read about in my next post 🙂
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