Sunday 16th August 09

Our first full day's holiday.

In the morning went to the Model Village just 2 minutes from our cottage, and whilst the family were having a second go around, I perused a bus timetable and found that there are special Sunday and Bank Holiday only services which go to the lighthouse and Bempton RSPB reserve. So I worked out a good set of connections, and we had lunch.

We all got the 2.50 bus to Flamborough and changed to get the next bus to Bempton Cliffs, where we would get an hour before the last bus back and a reasonable connection in Flamborough for the Sewerby bus.

The bus dropped us off in the carpark and as we walked towards the RSPB Bempton visitor centre, Gill took a tumble and landed on her knees, nose and forehead. She was quite shaken. We all helped her to the visitor centre where she sat and recovered. She didn't feel up to going down to the cliff tops to see the seabirds, but we three did so we headed off to the cliff tops. At the viewing area we came to, there was an RSPB volunteer with a telescope on a tripod. He lowered it so the children could see the cliffs close up... and the beautiful Gannets, a pair of which were 'beak fencing'; a courtship behaviour. We walked along to another viewing area with even more wonderful views of the magnificent cliffs (some photos on this webpage) but no man with telescope...

We soon scuttled back to the visitor centre where Gill had rallied and had bought pencils, pad of paper, postcards, and was drawing. We spent some time in the centre, I chatted to a rather nice RSPBer called Nadia...

We went for the bus. It's route was to Flamborough, then to the lighthouse and back to Flamborough. I asked if we could stay on the bus so we could have a quick view of the Flamborough Head Lighthouses (there are two), and the driver was happy with that. So when we got off in Flamborough, to get the bus to Sewerby, I saw that the route was to South Landing, back to Flamborough, and then to Sewerby... so when it came in, I asked the driver if we could get on and have a quick view of South Landing before going to our destination. He was OK about that!
So we had a really good bus tour of the Flamborough peninsular.

When we got in, Gill immediately walked down to the Co-op shop which is about 10 minutes into Bridlington, and I made tea. I made rice and veg with chick peas in a tomato and basil sauce which was very well recieved.

We all went for a game of Frisbee and then after the children went to bed, Gill and I had a game of Scrabble which she won.