A day in the car was the plan, and so it turned out to be.

We set off across the hills towards Barnsley, joined the motorway to head north to York, then left the motorway and drove gently through the Wolds to one of Yorkshire’s most easterly points, Flamborough Head.

The traffic was reasonable the whole way, the weather was better than it could have been, and the driving seemed quite easy, even with the truck traffic on the motorways. We had seen, or rather passed, Barnsley, Wakefield, Leeds, Tadcaster and York, running through the delightfully named village of Wetwang, onto Bridlington and finally Flamborough Head.

Flamborough Head is a chalky outcrop that juts out into the North Sea, about halfway up Yorkshire’s East Coast. There is a working Trinity House Lighthouse up there, plus some other navigational equipment used by today’s ships. High up on the cliff top, the white(ish) cliffs looked marvellous standing in the fairly calm sea, and the view up and down the coastline was excellent, especially as it wasn’t raining and there was good visibility.

Flamborough Head is known as a haven for migratory birds, and while it was the wrong time of year for the Puffins, there were Shearwaters, Cormorants and many types of gulls to be seen. The stars of the visit, though, and in abundance, were the Seals. We saw them in the water first, heads up like a load of grey buoys, but diving below the surface to reappear a few yards away. Moving around to look down on another beach, we saw the Seals laying on the shingle and sand, easily a of hundred of them, big and small, laying still or fighting with each other. I had never seen so many Seals like that, except on TV, so that was quite the sight, even if we had to stand perilously close to the edge of the hundred foot cliff to see them.

We dawdled for quite a while there, watched the boats, big and small, fishing the local waters, and while couldn’t quite see The Netherlands from our vantage point, we could see an oil rig out on the horizon. It was very wet underfoot, though, and the surprisingly large number of visitors there, given that it was a grey Monday in November, were churning up the grass and making all the pathways into rivers of mud. Winter sightseeing, eh?

From Flamborough we took the coast road to Robin Hood’s Bay, a little fishing village nestled at the top and bottom of a cliff, where the North York Moors meet the North Sea. On the family tree front, I have a a picture of my mum, my dad and my uncle at Robin Hood’s Bay, taken in the very early 1950s. I wasn’t out to recreate the photograph, but it was nice to know that my mum and dad had been here together.

Private cars are not allowed to drive down to the lower level of the village, as there’s no room to park at the bottom, and very few spaces to turn around, so everyone must park at the top and walk down. Top marks to the Council for closing all the Pay and Display parking machines for the winter, as I do love a bit of free parking. Before we started our descent, though, we availed ourselves of a very nice two-course lunch (it would have been three but there was too much to eat), at the Victoria Hotel. The food was good, much on the vegan menu for the good Mrs. M., and the view across the bay was second to none.

The walk down into the old village was steep, but the little houses built up high into the valley sides, were gorgeous. It’s very touristy, as you’d expect, and most things were still open despite the lateness of the year, for which I applaud the local business owners. Mind you, there was no shortage of people down there, and on the beach, so I guess there was money to be made. It’s quite the place, with the stone built rows of cottages clinging to the cliff. I can see why it’s such a popular destination.

The walk back up to the car was also steep, just in the wrong direction. We took it easy, though, as befits old people, and attained the car park without a medical emergency.

From Robin Hood’s Bay we went still further north, to Whitby. We might have had a look around there only it was virtually dark by the time we emerged from the Sainsbury’s store. Well, there are always things you need, aren’t there?

We were a long way from Holmfirth at this point, much closer to Teesside than York, so we knew we’d be in for a long drive back. We elected though, in the spirit of more family tree work, to visit the Forrester’s Arms, a pub in the North Yorkshire village of Kilburn. My uncle had run the pub in the sixties, and we visited in 1968 and stayed there a week. This was my first trip back since then. The drive from Whitby took us over the moors, which are not very interesting in the dark, and through Pickering and Helmsley. When we needed to drop down off the moor and into the Vale of York, we took the back road down Sutton Bank, a steep run down a big escarpment. It would have been fun in the daylight, but it was dark and raining, so the single-track road with it’s hairpin bends and precipitous drops, was even more fun. The odd thing was that once down the hill, we were in the flattest of flat farmland, and quickly coming to a halt in the village square, right in front of the pub.

The place had been spruced up somewhat but was essentially as I remembered. I enjoyed a good pint of Theakston’s Bitter and listened to the other customers with their broad Yorkshire accents. It was lovely. It would have been nice to stay longer, and eat from the extensive menu, but it had been a long day.

The run back south allowed us to hit trunk roads for much of the journey, running from Thirsk to Barnsley on motorways alone. The run back from Barnsley to Holmfirth wasn’t so much fun, pitch dark on wet roads, but we made it safely.

The day had turned out as anticipated, a long drive but some great sightseeing and a wonderful grown ups lunch. An excellent day’s vacation.