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Sunday

Fountains Abbey

Today started with a traditional English breakfast:

Roasted tomatoes Bbq Beans Bacon (not our regular bacon -- which is “streaky bacon” but back bacon which is the cut of bacon that is considered Canadian Bacon, but cured like our regular bacon. Really Really good stuff! Sausage Black pudding Poached eggs

On to Fountains Abbey

These are Jackdaws:

Our first deer

After a cream tea at the tea room, we went back home, exhausted.

Dinner was a starter of Yorkshire Pudding. (I STILL don’t understand how popovers are a “pudding”! Then we had a Sunday roast. Another delicious dinner. 

After dinner we had “pudding” -- which was a chocolate cake roll with a whipped cream and raspberry filling.

After Ellie left, we watched Horrible Histories Tv show and Antiques Road Show.

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Bempton Day

July 6th

It was an early morning. We left about 6:15. 

Jeff and I had visited Jesse out in New Mexico the week before we left for England (he worked at Philmont Scout Camp for the summer). While we were down there, we saw an absolutely gorgeous, black and white bird. It was a magpie.

England has magpies too!!! (Why doesn’t Virginia?)

I learned that if you see just one magpie, you’re supposed to say either:

“Good morning, good morning, good morning”

or

“Good morning, Mr. Magpie.” 

Because, when you’re little, you learn the poem:

One for sorrow Two for joy, Three for a girl, Four for a boy, Five for silver, Six for gold, Seven for a secret, Never to be told

So you say good morning when you only see one.

Anyway -- on to Bempton and the cliffs! It was cold and windy, but truly incredible.

At Bempton, the cliffs are filled with nesting birds. A large number are gannets, but there are also kittiwakes, guillemots, razor bills, etc. This will give you an idea of the cliffs:

Gannets are gorgeous birds -- white with black wing tips.

Though they’re not white when they’re immature.

Gannets are fun to watch. One of the behaviors they do is “mutual fencing”. Others call it beak mating.

They also pull weeds for nesting

There’s a lot of minor squabbling going on.

They are, after all, rather close to their neighbors!

There were the occasional puffins, along with other birds.

It was a wonderful morning

When watching Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom, my dad had a tendency to change the channel when the harsh bits of life came on (doing it for my mom, of course). So if you also inclined, you may want to skip this next bit.

At one point, we saw a seagull picking at something. It turned out to be a kittiwake chick. There was a young seagull looking on.

We had no idea whether it predated a kittiwake nest, or whether it just found a dead one. We would have thought that if it had grabbed one from the nest, we would have seen more of it.

However, later that morning, we saw two seagulls fighting in the air. At one point, something white was thrown up in the air and one of the seagulls caught it.

It was another chick

The worst part of it was that during the continuing fight, they dropped the chick. They didn’t even bother going back after it. If you’re going to do in a chick, you should follow through and not waste it! 

After a bit more photography, we decided to move on after a a tea at the cafe. While having our snack, someone came up to us and asked if we wanted to play “Pass the Parcel”. It was the nature reserves birthday! Sara and Ellie was surprised that I had never played Pass the Parcel!

To play the game, everyone sits in a circle and a large, wrapped, parcel is passed around the circle. Music is played, and when it stops, the person who has the parcel unwraps one layer. Sometimes there is a small gift found within that layer, sometimes not. Then the parcel is passed around again. It is continued to be passed until all wrapping layers have been removed and the large gift is found at it’s core.

However, this time, the parcel was so big, they had to put it in a wheelbarrow! So we all stood in a line as the wheelbarrow went by us.

I received a card in my layer!

After a gorgeous drive through the country:

We returned to Sara’s house, to find that her neighbor had backed into Ellie’s car and crunched her door. :(

Peter had made us a game casserole -- incredibly awesome dinner! The casserole included venison, pheasant, hare, rabbit, with a key ingredient being juniper berries.

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July 5th

....Continued

So after Middleham, we went curlew searching. We drove to a gorgeous countryside:

We weren’t sure if we’d find any curlews, since the area in which we were going to look had been mowed.

But we found one!

And we stalked him for quite awhile.

After we stopped played with the curlew, we headed back to Sara’s for dinner with Peter.

It was another marvelous dinner: salmon, broccoli, green beans, roasted tomatoes and sweet potato fries. I had champagne with elderflower. And we downloaded our photos of the day. Then to sleep. The next day would be an early one.

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England Day 3

Ellie came in last night!

Nice breakfast of bread and homemade jam.

Did I mention that Sara and I must be twins separated at birth? She does photography, knits, felted wool projects, AND makes jams? I’m seriously considering kidnapping Ellie and Sara and bringing them home with me. They can be my two carryons!

Today we went to Middleham Castle, home of Richard III. If you haven’t read The Sunne in Splendor you really should. EXCELLENT book. It has a different take on Richard III.

Here’s Ellie, me and Sara!

Anyway, since it’s one of my favorite books of all time, it was incredible to be standing in Middleham and to be walking the same ground that Dickon, Ned, and Anne all walked, lived, loved. I bought Sara a copy of Sunne in Splendor and told her and Ellie that the had to read it. Their Peters might be interested, as well.

Oh -- you don’t know the Peters? Well, I only met one: Sara’s partner. Extremely nice guy (and great cook!), but Ellie’s partner is a Peter, as well. So we decided that Jeff’s name is now: “Not Peter”.

We had a wonderful lunch of a warm Baguette with bacon, brie & cranberry. After a bit of a drive, we had ice cream at a dairy farm. And then went hunting for curlews.

more later! (and photos)

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England Day 2

Ok -- there was interesting stuff in the morning, but I’m skipping ahead. Back out to the islands! It was significantly windier than day 1. They told us outright that there was only a 50/50 chance of landing on the first island.

But they did it!! Basically the boat had to pull up to the side of a short cliff, and we had to climb over the bow of the boat to get to the stairs.

And right away -- there were puffins!! Puffins on the cliff:

Puffins everywhere!

And finally the shots I was waiting for: There were puffins standing around with the sand eels in their mouths!

Here -- enjoy some more puffin photos before I move on.

And there were the other birds.

Shags:

Kittiwakes

Terns

Oh -- and the terns seemed to like Sara’s hat

There were fighting seagulls

And more puffins!!

Do you know what baby puffins are called?

They’re called Pufflings!!

We saw a few!!!!

One more look before saying goodbye to the puffins:

And then we said goodbye to the islands

After the islands, we had a good fish and chips lunch at Neptunes. I had lessons from Sara on the nuances of saying “cheers” (thanks). I learned about chip butties. And then back to Sara’s for the night.

Goodbye puffins!!!

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England -- Puffin Adventure Day 1, Island #2

After having no luck landing on island number 1, I held my breath as we started off for island number 2: Innerfarne.

On the way there were more nesting kittiwakes

More puffins

Oh -- and did I mention the grey seals? There were grey seals. (now I’ve mentioned it!)

and yet more puffins!

AND WE WERE ABLE TO LAND ON THE ISLAND!!!

WHOOT!!!!

The first thing we saw was arctic terns. 

Lots of arctic terns!

And babies.

We were actually told to watch where we step, because sometimes the babies would come out on the walkways. 

So let me back up a bit. Before heading out to the island I was told to make sure to bring a hat. With all the arctic terns flying around, I figured it would be to protect myself from flying poop.

I’ll get back to that in a bit.

Terns. I believe I was talking about terns.

Terns are gorgeous birds that dive straight down into the water to catch fish. Both the terns and puffins were catching sand eels to feed to their young.

After cresting a small hill -- there they were!!

Puffins!

and more puffins!

Puffins dig burrows to have their young. The young stay in the burrow until they’re old enough to leave, and one pamphlet said that when the leave the burrow, they do it in the dark. Not sure about that one. I’ll have to look it up.

We watched puffins on island two for a couple of hours. There were more kittiwake nests

More guillemots  

Oh. I almost forgot about the terns.

Remember that I was supposed to wear a hat?

It does do a wonderful job of protecting you from poop.

But that’s not what it’s for.

It’s simply to protect you!

Remember the birds?

If you get too close to their young, they will peck you on the head! It doesn’t really hurt, but it’s a powerful peck. The hat definitely protects you!

We stayed that night at an airbnb, had an excellent dinner of steak pie at the Mason’s Arms, short bath, downloaded photos and off to bed. We were doing another day on the islands the following morning. Hopefully we’d be able to land on the first island.

I ended the first full day in England with dreams of more puffins.

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England -- Puffin Adventure Day 1, Island #1

After meeting up with Sara the night before, we started off on our journey to see the puffins. We had to be up early and we drove out to a down called Seahouses. We started the morning off with a typical breakfast: bacon sandwiches. 

Not BLTs

Just bacon on a sandwich with some brown sauce. The brown sauce is like a brown gravy with Worcestershire sauce. I had some grilled onions on mine.

If you haven’t had English bacon, you should! The bacon is the back bacon that has the round that our Canadian bacon comes from, but is cured like our bacon. It’s soooo good!

Off to the boat. Sometimes the boat can’t go out due to weather, so we kept our fingers crossed. However, it was a beautiful day with calm seas.

We walked out quite a ways to get to the boat, and then loaded on. This wasn’t our boat, but very similar to the one we were taking:

By the way, if you have a boat, you just leave it until high tide.

The boat took us by a number of islands that all had tons of birds.

The Guillemots reminded me of penguins. The guillemots and kittiwakes (the ones that look like seagulls) nested on very small areas of the cliffs.

The guillemots were funny to watch -- they would jump off the cliff and casually fly down, but they’d bounce (skip) on the water a bit when landing. And then they do what looks like the butterfly stroke when taking off.

And then we had our first puffin sighting!

We were getting close!!

All we needed to do was land on the first island of the day: Staple Island. Remember: beautiful day, flat seas (this is the north sea, you know...)

and we couldn’t land!

The swell was such that it wasn’t safe to land. Well, not quite, it was more that it wouldn’t be safe to come get us in a couple of hours. I didn’t mind. I would have just stayed on the island with the puffins until it was safe to come and get me! After getting sooooo close, we had to turn back to port. The second island didn’t open until the afternoon.

Sara and I walked around a bit, ate our sandwiches of cheese and chutney (a  caramelized onion chutney), got an ice cream, and just killed time until the boat went out again.

To be continued...