and Sandsend. It started when we had very little money, and has continued because it's a place of peace and beauty. And money? Well, that all goes on school fees, so we never have any to spare anyway!Since the Autumn of 1991, we have taken our main holidays at Whitby, renting a caravan on a lovely farm between Whitby and Sandsend. It started when we had very little money, and has continued because it's a place of peace and beauty. And money? Well, that all goes on school fees, so we never have any to spare anyway!
Some years we have taken the dogs with us. Some years we have let them have a holiday at home without us, but with Connie, Tim's mother. This year (1999) we had decided to take our last three dogs, Billy, Penny and Alfie on holiday with us
. If you want to learn more about the dogs, just click here. It opens a new window, so you won't lose your place.
The Friday night before we left saw the car packed to the gunwhales with "stuff", as usual, less than last year! It's always less than last year! And we went to bed, ready to wake up at 4am, "empty" the dogs, and get going. It's just under a 300 mile drive, and the only way to beat the traffic is to leave that early. We set off in Melanie's rather elderly Volvo (we got it in March 1986 when it was already 18 months old), a car we have loved for years. "Stately" describes its forward progress the best!
Forty five minutes later we were at the junction of the A404 and the M40 at High Wycombe, just pressing ojn the accelerator to leave the traffic lights when we had an enormous bang, and all forward motion ceased amid whirring noises. Tim said a rude word. Then he said several more rude words. Quite loudly. Then he called the RAC Rescue Service on the batphone, and we got a ride home on the back of the tow truck. Something expensive in the automatic transmission had broken.
Home again we dumped the Volvo in the garage at home, and then transferred everything to Tim's car. Everything except the dogs. They don't fit in his saloon, and he needs it for work, so no dog hair ever gets into it either! Luckily Connie was there to look after the cats, so the dogs stayed in Bracknell.
Tim's car is a bit quicker than Melanie's. We thundered back to and past High Wycombe, along the M40, onto the M42, and stopped for a (good grief!) MacBreakfast somehwere near Ashby de la Zouch, then onwards, M1, M18, A1, A64 to York, and to the moors. North of Pickering (are you keeping up with this? If you need a map, try the Ordnance Survey website!) is a lovely peaceful valley where we always stop for a while. Usually we get ther at about 9, and stop with a thermos of tea for a while until we can get in to the caravan. That Saturday we arrived there at 12.30! Knackered!
It's a beautiful valley. 
Even if other people are there you can ignore them completely, and spend time locked in your own thoughts. It's almost as though it was created for people who need peace. It isn't too extraordinary to suggest that the god or gods that you believe in are present in person. It is an old place. This picture shows grass grazed short by sheep, and it looks like a parkland scene. Parkland is deceptive. I have lent a description of this place to a very dear friend to be a place of peace for when he is troubled. It is that kind of as place.
To get there you travel on the small road from Pickering to Stape, with the North York Moors Railway station to your left hand side. Leaving Pickering alongside the railway line you pass trout hatcheries, and cross the level crossing, going now ever uphill. As you rise, the landscape changes, from farmland to woodland plantation, to moorland. You first see the moors as you breast a hilltop and start to descend towards a hairpin bend and then ahed to a gate.
You must open the gate, drive through, and close it behind you. This is old shhep moorland, used still for grazing, and first grazed probably even before the monks at Whitby and elsewhere farmed the area. Today it is also a pheasant and grouse moor. Onwards uphill, now with woodland to your right and heather to your left, green in July, purple in August, you come again to the cresst of a hill, and dip to the first of two fords. AAs you rise again, visble to your right, just "pressent" to your left, is a Roman road, part of the great network of roads spreading out from the Roman Army Training Camp whose ruiuns are at Cawthorne.
Almost there, now, with a very narrow road, open to each side, the wildness of the place catching hold of you, youo come to the brow of this hill, and start to descend, first slowly, now sharply, with the road falling away to your left. Suddenly a ford, then a sharp right hand hairpin. You are here. Park the car.
Oft times there are people there as well. It has become popular as the road I have just described has been surfaced. When we first found it, the surface was grit and gravel and the traffic was nil. It doesn't matter about the other people. Nor about their laughter, nor their shouting. This place is peaceful. It can absorb people as though they were not present at all. Almost before time, the beauty is in the fact that nothing matters while you are there, and that time runs differently.
So differently that I was certain that I had more photographs of it. But I do not!
When we moved on to the farm, High Straggleton Farm, just inside the border of the North York Moors National Park, we found the usual warm welcome from Mrs Atkinson, whose caravan it is, and also a duck and nine ducklings! Unusual, since the farm has no pond! They are her small grandson's! He was given the duck and her eggs for his birthday. Lovely duck noises emanated from the pen, and they were let out each day to wander, but kept fox-proof at night. While we were there they outgrew the pen, and whole new one had to be built
The caravan is oldish, yet spotless, and as comfortable as can be expected! They are never comfy unless they are your own with your own furniture, because they are a compromise. It makes for any discomfort by its location, though, and its privacy Best of all it has superb sea views. And I mean superb. Also it is ideally sited to see the sunset.
Most people think of Yorkshire as the East coast of England. Whitby may be in Yorkshire, in the old North Riding, but its coast faces North. It takes some getting used to for we southerners! Hmm, Melanie was born in Yorkshire. I wonder what that says about southerners?
We are either lucky with the weather, or it is ghastly.
We were lucky. Saturday was hot and sunny, but we were too lazy to do anything other than a late night stroll along the beach. Sunday was a beach day. The North Sea is too cold to swim in. Doesn't stop people, but it is too cold. So Alex swims in it. Hmm. Monday was beach, too. The rest of the week you had to be a bit brave to go to the beach.
The rest of the week, the weather was British. Outings were very much in order. Apart from the tour of Whutby and the old town, with cottages built by whalers ijn time now gone for good, we wanted to visit somewhere very special.
Melanie loves Eagle Owls, expecially the European Eagle Owl. It's too long a story to tell! There are two Birds of Prey aviaries near whitby. One at Kirkleatham, and the other at Kirby Wiske. We went to both.
Kirkleatham is small, but with a marvellous family feel to it. It has a website. Well, it had one, and it will have a new one. So, at present, linking to it from here is fatuous! I will link as soon as I find the new one! We met the owner, and he introduced us to a baby European Eagle Owl. Eight weeks old, and about 15 inches tall, and still fuzzy rather than fully fetahered, it was gorgeous, probably a male. And it liked people. I mean liked people.
It sat on each of us, on our hands, just gently. Walked over and climbed on. Huge soft feet, like a cat's, but more padded, with great talons on the end of each toe, the most wonderful orange eyes, and a hugely hooked beak which took hold of us so gently. A treat. We spent at least an hour chatting to it and stroking it. And then another hour!
You can spend many hours watching young creatures. No-one could accuse it oif being "wise", but it was adorable
Melanie wants one!
The next day we went to the other place. Bigger, seemingly more impersonal, but wonderful, too. And we were allowed to make friends with the birds there as well. We went to see the owls, of course. But there were other wonderful birds there as well. Gorby, a Russian Steppe Eagle, for one.
Gorby can't be flown to the fist, because he is stupid at landing. Feet forward and pray is Gorby's idea of a controlled landing! So he crashes a lot unless he aims for the ground! He's pretty bright, though, and beautiful. There was also a cute little Owl, called Mini, a beautiful Buzzard, and Doughnut - A Barn Owl.
Doughnut perched on Tim's fist and let him stroke her to sleep! Tim now loves Barn Owls
, too. There's something very special about having a bird, yes even one that is no longer wild, or has been born in captivity and is imprinted on humans, sitting on your fist, and lookiing you in the eyes. I know that phobia of bbirds is surprisingly common, but I wonder, now, if owls might cure people, if only they would get close enough!
We walked around the centre, and Melanie chatted to the staff about about the European Eagle Owl that landed outside our house, yes in Berkshire, where they are not wild! And when they were dopingt the flying display, the rememered her. Which is one of the reasons we have this picture of Melanie with Mr Baggot. It certainly shows the size of the bird. And this is a male. The females are even larger.
Alex wasn't left out either. I was just content to stroke Mr BBaggot, and to make friends with him. Well, I think I made friends! There is no brain in a European Eagle Owl! Or, if there is, it's reserved for hunting small creatures. The awesome power of the bird is obvious. The fact that it is gentle is amazing.
This centre is run by Falconry UK Ltd. I can't find a website, or I would link to it from here. If you are reading this, or if you are falconry UK, and you would like to tell me of the site, then mail me the URL, please. During the flying displays, they often ask for volunteers from the audience to be "flown to". This very small boy was the "bravest" in his family. He volunteered to have a Buzzard land on his fist. Lovely! Others in his family looked terrified when any bird came near them. This kid? No. Unfazed by the whole thing,
he stood proudly and looked adoringly at the huge bird that landed on his outstreched glove.
It's really nice when a display, breeding and flying centre also takes the trouble to involve the paying guests. To be fair to Kirkleatheam, it involves its guests, too. It is just smaller, and hasn't the same wealth of facilities. After all, we would bnever have each been nibbled by a baby owl if we hadn't been to Kirklleatham, and wouldn't have met friendly adults (tame is not the word to use, here) if we hadn't gone to Kirby Wiske.
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