Next Neil and Cath.  Great to see them.  Neil, after all these years, hasn’t changed a bit.  Touch greyer perhaps.  The Old Rectory was lovely as before, great view

What I hadn’t realised is that Neil’s family is built into the village – they built Wilson’s Mill.   The Wilson name’s everywhere.  He’s got family trees – a small family orchard in fact – on the wall up the stairs.  

Nice old Yorkshire village:

And here’s the man – you’re looking at the very fabric of Yorkshire

And so on to York to see off the kids – Sarah to catch the plane back to Australia, Katie to travel around Scotland for a week.  

This platform brings back a lot of memories – for 5 years my parents used to see me off from here on the train to school in Edinburgh.  Where I wasn’t very happy at all.  And here I was, 45 years later, saying goodbye to my own child.  Much less traumatic!

We went off to Bridlington where the family used to go to church.  Pretty boring I thought in those days.  Now I didn’t think that at all, really interesting church – the only one with gargoyles of Prince Charles and Camilla.  Yup, really.

You can only imagine the excitement I felt.

Bempton Cliffs is nearby – some of the highest cliffs in England at 100m, running for 10km and bubbling with boids.  The others wanted to see same, so I tagged along.  I used to go there with my Dad when I was a kid.  It was much easier to fall off and kill yourself in those days,but now there are fences all along the edge.  Progress of a sort. 

So I did some boidwatching. Here’s what I saw:

These are very rare – Fat Twins, got a big tick in my little book, that’s for sure.

This one’s also quite rare – a solitary female. Tick.

A pink-breasted male, hunting. Tock.  Time passed – the whole thing took about 2hrs……

A solitary male, noodling.

A male preening

Some can be quite inquisitive if disturbed.

Mostly however they exhibit strong flocking behaviour.

Here’s my little flock.

Flocks clustering at the feeding grounds

I was able to observe everything without leaving my cup of tea at the cafe.  Heaven knows why the others spent so long outside.

What I didn’t tell them was that before I came along my Dad used to abseil down these cliffs with his mates and steal the eggs.

Ahem….

We like Cathedrals, so we visited a few of the greats in England, giving Katie and Sarah a chance to see some of the most beautiful buildings of their heritage, and for us to revisit them.  

Here’s one:

This one was put together a while ago (3,000 years) by 3 sisters.  Before breakfast apparently.  Something to do with giving them somewhere to get away from their men. Hard to believe the latter, nowhere to hide I’d have thought, but I can see how it wouldn’t take too long with a simple structure like that.  Unlike some of the others – Wells, York Minster etc which took 200-300 years to finish. 

And another cathedral of a sort – Dartmoor prison.  I have liked to stop and poke around, but they weren’t having any of that – pity, since I’ve spent 7 years doctoring in prisons I wouldn’t have minded a peek.  Different sort of medicine, far removed from suburban practice….

It was important to me to show the kids my home country.  We went to Muston Hall, a beautiful gracious home where I grew up.  Not much changed in 50 years – the willow tree where my sister and I swung on the branches is still there on the left, as are the gardens and the fields.  I could have walked back into my childhood up that driveway.  So much of my life took place behind those windows……

And, still full of memories, but perhaps not quite so gracious, the beachfront at Filey – the cheap, noisy arcades, tourists, and the beach where I got away from it all on the rocks and fossil hunting on the cliffs.  

Treated the family to a horrible, fatty, meal of fish and chips, winkles, crab and green mushy peas.  Just as disgusting as it always was.

Then on to Scarborough – Victorian funland and just as gross as Filey, but bigger.  Here’s where I began my sailing career on Dad’s little yacht, Gloria.

One of the reasons for going as a family was to scatter Peggy and Don’s ashes on Meon Hill.  It was a special place to them during the war, he was a spitfire pilot, she was in the land army.  When they could get away they would go up there and get a bit of peace.

We had our wedding reception near there, and flew kites off the hill afterwards.  Now we were back there with our children – grown up women.  Nice to remember all those times, and Peggy and Don. 

Each of  us had ashes and walked along the hillside spreading them in the wind.

Later in the trip we went to East Yorkshire to a little village called Thwing, where my parents are buried.  On the Yorkshire Wolds, it has been largely untouched by the last 1100 years.  A beautiful sunny calm day, we tidied up the grave, added gravel and flowers and all sat together on a nearby bench.  Perhaps the last time I will visit their grave, perhaps not, but a time for me to think of them and our life as a family back  in my childhood.

First up we went off to Sallys home village, where she met some old old friends.  Memory lane for her.  But the village is now the home of the very rich English middle and upper class – close enough to get to London by train, full of old old Tudor houses, it has become one of the most sought after places in the country.  Pity, it was nicer before that….

Then off to Exmouth where her family gathered in large numbers – I don’t have any rels, so I was somewhat staggered by the quantity (there’s an equal number in Canada).  Nice bunch though, we spent a weekend talking and doing stuff.

En route we had a look at some old old settlements on Dartmoor.  Amazing thought that these were put up about 3,000 years ago and haven’t been shifted since.

The blog ground to a halt after that, and I’m adding a precis of what went on offstage as it were.

To write this blog, which I really like doing,  I need a decent internet connection to noodle around the web, and plenty of time.  Remarkably Britain has a lot of pretty crappy internet with rare sparkles of good.  Mostly I used my phone’s hotspot, but that was flakey too.  And time – I just didn’t have any, buzzing around from place to place as we were.  And Sally not being disposed to sit around while I do the blog thing.  So it ground to a halt.  Normal service will resume as soon as possible.

But I didn’t stop taking photos, so, now I’m home, here are the highlights.