Stray pigeon
Sculpture trail
Thrift
Littoraria angulifera
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We
parked at North Landing to save a mile’s walk from the village. The weather was warm and sunny for a
change, and gave us a better chance to see the birds including plenty of
puffins, as well as all the sea-birds from yesterday except gannet. A stray homing pigeon, perhaps caught in
yesterday’s weather, looked lost on the steps down the cliff and allowed a
very close approach. A “gannet” wood sculpture marked the cliff-edge, although the thick-set
neck made it look more like a penguin!
We walked slowly along the north shore to Flamborough Head with its
lighthouse. In several spots there
were more colonies of northern marsh orchids on the cliffs. For the first time thrift also started
appearing frequently and we even found the alien bur forgetmenot. After this the scenery changed, with few
cliff-nesting birds on the south side, although there were flocks of juvenile
herring and lesser black-backed gulls on the shore and the occasional
oystercatcher. The path was less well
marked and rather narrow, bordered by crops of barley and rape, and sodden by
last night’s heavy downpour that created puddles forcing us off the
path. When we reached South Landing we
did not go straight down to the beach but took (by fortunate mistake) a
detour through a small woodland mainly of sycamore where there was a sculpture
trail, with such exhibits as a huge rope nest with gigantic eggs, a spectral
white mermaid among the dark trees, and a donkey with basket of coal and
basket of fish to represent a 1930 wreck of a ship carrying coal. (It had kept the locals stocked with fuel
for several months!) The trail ended
in a picnic site and car park and a road leading down to South Landing with
its lifeboat station. From here we
could ascend the cliff-top again and continue to Danes Dyke, where we entered
another sycamore wood in a steep valley, from the bottom of which we decided
to take the beach, the tide being out.
The cliffs were still of chalk, though much lower than the Head, and
there were boulders and platforms of chalk among the sand, but we gained
Bridlington North Sands without too much difficulty. We walked to the centre of
Bridlington. We passed piles of “cars”
for going on a large wheel that had just been erected to become Bridlington’s
“Eye”. This was completed the next day
and was a somewhat celebrated local event.
We found a café for a late lunch and returned to the coast again at the harbour, where boats lay on thick
grey gooey mud, and descended a ramp to South Sands. We now walked continually on the beach for
several miles under holiday camps, caravan parks and low sandstone
cliffs. The shelling improved as went
along and included wreckage from the night’s storms, such as masses of
pipefish, swimming crabs,
goosefoot starfish and the occasional
large fish like red snapper and sea bass. We also picked up a recently
dead Great Pond Snail and a Littoraria
angulifera. (This is a
mangrove snail from Florida, the Caribbean and the Pacific. It seems unlikely to have arrived by
natural means, but why someone should discard it here is another
puzzle.) The rains had also swollen
the normally little streams that came down to the beach (hence the pond
snail), making them wide torrents that were difficult to cross. We went as far as Barmston, a small village
set back from the coast, with a large holiday park on top of the cliffs. There
was no way up and we had to return to where the cliffs descended and there
was a path into the caravan area. We
went through the park to the road on the far side and phoned for a taxi back
to our car. We walked from our B&B
300m to the Seabirds pub in the evening, where the staff members were
friendly and the food quite good.
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