Bridlington, United Kingdom

I awoke with bit of extra excited anticipation today, as we were scheduled to go on a Puffin cruise. First opportunity after breakfast I checked the Facebook page for the ‘Yorkshire Belle’ to see if the weather was calm enough for sailing. It looked promising so we set off in the car for Bridlington, an hours drive north east of York. Bridlington is (was) one of the key seaside resort towns on England’s east coast, along with Whitby and Scarborough further up the coast. The drive was pleasant and our iPad took us through a few back roads aka one lane thrill rides to ‘speed’ up the trip verses going inland to motorways. Scenery is pretty much the same rolling hills, hedges verses stone walls and farm land. Plenty of trees everywhere – in paddocks and the side of the road which I think is the key difference between NZ country side and English.

We found a pay park at North Pier and had an hour to spare before we could buy tickets from the kiosk and hop on board. North Pier is a typical English holiday pier which from our NZ cultural and age group perspective is a tad tacky. It has fair type atmosphere, candy floss, cheap icky souvenir and fairground gaming stands and fish and chip and ice-cream places every third shop. I think you need to have grown up with it to ‘get’ it. The sun had decided to make an appearance today and along with its warmth livening up the place, every man, woman and parent with their child (who wasn’t at school) came out just to sit and have an ice cream and enjoy the sea gulls and pier atmosphere. I just want to mention that we feel that there were no cushens of ours among this bunch of happy folk.

Keeping local of course we shared a fish chips and I had a cold seafood platter with local cockles, mussels, shrimps, and whelks (a sea snail type thing – tasty, sweet, slightly chewy – like the white muscle that holds the mussel onto its shell). As we were waiting and eating and guarding our food from the watchful eyes of the gulls who constantly inch closer there was a man advertising a power boat ride. He had such an annoying – Vern thought it funny – voice – fair ground material, “Go on a speed boat ride, etc.” I don’t know how he could keep it up for minutes on end – like 15 minutes!

I find the Northern accent rather difficult to understand compared to the Liverpool area, its a lot more oh arrh and harder than the lilting south western. I am sure they find ours very difficult to understand too.

Our boat was an older style passenger craft that sat about 80 people and it was easy to get a seat out front with good views. The day was really perfect for going out, as there was little breeze, and it was not a cold one either. Bridlington sits in quite a large sheltered bay and we went along the coast line where there are semi white cliffs that border a reserve/national park area. When we went around the Flamborough heads there was a bit of a 1.5m swell but the boat handled it well. A short distance past the heads we came near a cliff where a lot of sea birds nest – Bempton. We saw a couple of Ganet fliying high over the boat, and lots of Guillemots which like puffins are small and you see them flying back with little fish hanging out of their mouths. The puffins themselves are pretty shy, and rather small. I had an impression that they were about large duck size, when in fact they are half the size of a chicken – or the size of a small mutton bird. Accordingly they are hard to spot, let alone get a picture of at sea. I was absolutely delighted to get the ones I did, and that was with my 200mm lens at full zoom!

Had we more time I would love to have gone to an island where they nest in their 1,000’s and get up close and personal – but that will have to be a next time treat.

After our 1.5hr trip, which was great value for £7 each we headed to the other side of the harbour where there is a surprising 2.5km long golden beach. The sun was still out behind us, but there were some clouds rolling in – which had not affected the nice warm day at all. We got an icecream and went for a stroll and noticed spiral cones on the sand like pasta and saw a man digging with a garden fork. Went up and chatted to him, and the 74 year old showed us the big fat worm things that he was digging up – approx 5-8cm and some as thick as my pinky finger. He explained that he used them as fish bait for cod, bass, and salmon to name a few. We ended up having a lovely chat with him about his life, immigrants, EU, Commonwealth, son in Australia and more! We do enjoy meeting and chatting with ordinary people as we travel and you find that there is more in common that not. As we left he also said how much he enjoyed to talking to us and wished us good and safe travels.

We left the pretty quaint seaside town of Bridlinton with a nice memories of golden beaches, abundant birdlife and er… colourful pier and people.