But, then again . . . . .

By TrikinDave

The Old Man of Flamborough.

Spent the day with Mrs TD visiting Bempton Cliffs Nature Reserve and watching a fantastic display of expensive cameras pointing at nesting gannets, then on to Scarborough to visit a patchwork shop and finally back to Flamborough for a walk along the cliffs which was where we saw this stack.
Despite my cynicism, the bird life is spectacular along this coast, almost as good as The Bass Rock or Saint Abb's Head. You could spend hours watching the gannets and (the very few) puffins commuting home from their fishing grounds to the south; it is a little early in the year for the puffins and they have also suffered terribly from the bad weather so far this year.
One of the volunteer guides was proudly telling us about the pair of gannets nesting on plot 33; she has done a survey of the area annually for the past 8 years and these are always the first to lay an egg. I couldn't help thinking that she should stay in more (perhaps patchwork would be a suitable pastime).

The geology of the area is based on limestone and sandstone; where ever there's a ploughed field you can see that it's littered with chunks of lime and, where ever the wind blows across such a field, the adjacent roads are covered with a layer of wind-dried sand which is very difficult to cycle along and stay upright.
The limestone also shows itself in the sea as a milky discolouration of the water where the waves are breaking but, further out, there's an abrupt boundary where the water becomes less turbulent and can drop its load of lime; beyond that the sea is, well, sea coloured.

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