Why not use your campervan to see friends and family this year? As well as visiting lesser-known destinations like this…
Words & pictures ❚ Judy Smith
It was a New Year’s resolution that took us to Flamborough. In the dark depths of winter I make far too many, and, although few survive long, I was sure this one would – for Eric and I this would be a year for visiting old friends. You know the sort I mean – the ones you knew well once upon a time, but for whom the passing years have reduced communication to a Christmas card. That’s if you send cards at all with the current cost of postage.
This visiting, we said, would be done in style. We wouldn’t inflict ourselves on our friends but take the ’van and spend a few nights in their area. After all, just about everywhere in the UK must hold enough interest for a weekend, and folk who live there can give us some inside tips, perhaps direct us to places that wouldn’t be on the usual tourist trail. So, sun shining, hour gone forward, daffodils out, ’van washed (that was a waste, given its later mud bath!) and we were heading for Flamborough and our friends, Allan and Sue.
Flamborough? Well, if you look at a map of the Yorkshire coast, the long sweep of shore north of Hull has an obvious projection, a projection so large it requires a separate inset on the Ordnance Survey map. On that nose of land sits the village of Flamborough, effectively with sea on three sides. And Flamborough is also in the Yorkshire Wolds.
On either side the river lie Long fields of barley and of rye That clothe the wold and meet the sky
I remember, as a 12-year-old, searching for that strange word ‘wold’ in my dictionary while the rest of the class got on with the haunting tale of The Lady of Shalott. Wold didn’t feature in that basic dictionary, but today Mr Google tells me it’s an ‘unforested area of high ground’, which doesn’t explain that it’s also rolling country. And the bedrock of these wolds is chalk, which means that the cliffs of Flamborough Head are white cliffs, the like of which I thought were only found in the south of England.
To be fair, the cliffs around Flamborough are more rounded, and don’t have that ‘cut with a giant’s spade’ look you get around Beachy Head. But what they do have is ledges in the chalk, and this exposed northern coast provides the perfect nesting place for thousands of seabirds. In fact, this is the only site where gannets nest in mainland Brit
