My tour of "oop north" (there's no way I can pull off this fay Southern poofiness, as I am really one of these people and as is my right, fiercely and unthinkingly proud of my Yorkshireness) culminated with a night in the seaside town of Bridlington. It doesn't get any more glamorous than this.
I was still concerned about my car, but had been told on the phone by various garages that only a VW specialist can deal with coolant problems and so I'd have to wait til Tuesday til one of these was open. But on the drive out of York I spotted a Kwik Fit garage that was open and wondered if there was anything I could do to help. A kind faced man was behind the counter taking a call to which the answer was "Yes, we are open today even though it's a bank holiday". I've spent all day answering the same question he dead-panned to me. I told him about my problem and he said there was no way he could get the required coolant today and that anyway I would have to go to a specialist, but he kindly offered to top up the coolant tank with water, which should hopefully see me through (I hadn't been sure this was allowed). Then he gave me a coke bottle full of water in case the coolant tank ran empty again. He expected no payment for this service, but was extremely helpful. I know I can be negative when companies fuck up, but I was very impressed by this helpful, non-patronising assistance. Looks like the Kwik-Fit ads have got it right.
Diane was keen to see the puffins at Flamborough, so that's where we headed, with a car that at last was not beeping at me any more and instructing me to stop. It had been defeated by simple tap water.
The bay at Flamborough is stark and impressive. White cliffs surround rock pools and occasional outcrops of stranded bits of cliff that have withstood the ravages of the sea. It is all rather tragically undercut by some graffiti which some bone-headed twats have daubed on the beautiful white rock, the worst of which says, "Pakis Go Home". Which must be a bit of a kick in the face for anyone who has travelled all the way from Pakistan, just to see the wonders of Flamborough Bay, only to discover that at least one local person wants them to get on a plane and go straight home again. It's not great work for the tourist industry of Yorkshire. I would advise that "Pakis. Stay a while and enjoy a drink at our local cafe and may I suggest a visit to the York Dungeons and Robin Hood's Bay and then when your time with us has expired, please do take the plane home, but visit again and tell your friends."
I am not a racist and can't really understand the mentality of anyone who is (well I can, they suffer from massive personal insecurity obviously and are also thick and should be shot in the face with a harpoon), but if I were one, seeing someone write anything on this beautiful and peaceful wonder of nature would immediately make me want to disassociate myself from them. What I am saying is that it is not a great advert. I hope that someone from Farmborough might go down there and clean it off. It spoils things a bit and makes everyone from Yorkshire look a bit stupid by association. Yeah, sure, someone might write it up again, but then clean it off again. Or just paint over it with white paint. There's graffiti up there from 2001 for Christ's sake. Next time I go up there I will take some paint, but it would be nice to think that someone up there gets there first.
Finding puffins was proving difficult, but we walked on the cliff top gaping in wonder at the swooping flight paths of the other birds. My fear of heights (
which I somehow overcame to jump out of a plane) meant that I found it difficult to go too close to the edge, but Diane found a spot where we could see the birds nesting on the rocks and were also directly above a nest of puffins who surprised us both by being able to fly (though I suppose if they couldn't then living on a cliff face would be a pretty stupid thing to do).
I lay, not too close to the edge, with the sun shining on my back and the wind whistling in my ears, watching the birds flying gracefully to their designated rocks, kind of hoping one or two of them might mis-judge it and splat face first into the rock. This never happened. I was glad really.
One type of bird had a bit of an ungainly way of carrying itself in flight, splaying its legs out as it went and wobbling a bit. Diane wondered if birds had a sense of aesthetics and whether this bird knew that it wasn't as graceful as the gulls or as attractive as the puffins. I thought it was blissfully unaware of its handicap and probably was mainly thinking about where it might get its next bit of food, or how it would manage to fly to its specific bit of rock.
It was strangely comforting lying above this other world and seeing how they do things over in the land of birds. I think overall I'd rather be a human, but only had to look behind me to see a load of middle-aged people playing golf in almost identical clothing to wonder a bit whether we were just as ridiculous to those odd-gaited birds.
