Puffin interruptus
Nov. 5th, 2022 01:39 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shewhomustI haven't been feeling great since my booster vaccination: nothing major, and mostly the achiness they warn you about, plus a slightly upset tummy, which could be anything. It was worst about 24 hours after the jab, and had been steadily improving since, but I am taking today gently (in truth, saving my energy for a dinner date this evening with many cousins visiting Sunderland dor the match). So I have not accompanied durham_rambler to a conference about the World Heritage site; instead, I will try to make some progress with stalled posts...
So here's that long-promised explanation for the enigmatic puffin of Bridlington, which has been sitting here, ninety per cent complete but untouched for exactly a month. That's got to be a good sign ...
The explanation has already been partly over taken by events, of course, since it starts with us finally taking delivery of our new, electric car - and you know all about that! We had ordered it at the very end of last year, knowing even then that we would have to wait for it - there's a world chip shortage, and it had to be imported from China - but expecting delivery in the spring... Then we thought we'd have it by midsummer: we certainly hadn't planned to drive the old car all the way to the north coast, and doing so gave us a few anxious moments. After that, we gave up expecting anything: it would arrive when it arrived... And finally in September it did arrive, and of course we had to try it out.
So we planned a short jaunt, nothing ambitious, well within its range, with an overnight and some seaside... And it just so happens that the tourism organisations for the Yorkshire coast (I was very happy to learn that there is once again an East Riding Council) were attempting to prolong the season with a Puffin Trail. This isn't an original idea: you distribute a number of blank - I suppose you can call them sculptures - and invite artists to decorate them, and visitors to collect them. I've seen elephants in the past, and Paddington Bears. But as we know, puffins are best ...
We started at the most northerly point of the trail. Sarah Dalton's The Balance of Threat and Hope is stationed at the RSPB visitor centre at Bempton Cliffs - that is, the point on the trail where you can, in season, see actual puffins:
It's one of the subtler designs: from a distance the painting is realistic, but close-up you can see fishing fleets, wind turbines, sand eels, suggestions of the threats and hopes ahead. It meets the brief given to the artists (the three themes were endangered wildlife of the coasts and seas, global warming and green energy, and people and stories of the East Yorkshire coast) but it treats the bird as a subject in its own right, not just a canvas. The puffins get stranger, and some of them wear it better than others...
I thought I was being self-indulgent in the pursuit of puffins (as I'm being self-indulgent now in recording it), butdurham_rambler had downloaded an app, and became very enthusiastic about scanning each puffin we saw, to add it to his tally. So we made a couple of stops in the Flamborough area, to scoop up outliers, but our destination was Bridlington, where there were numerous puffins and we had accordingly booked an overnight. All I knew about Bridlington was that it was one of those seaside towns where trades unions used to hold their conferences: hence the 'Bridlington agreement' (not to poach each other's membership). But the first sight was promising: Emily Jayne Kaan's Starlet gazes out over the promenade.
This is the classic seaside aspect of the town. The promenade even has sculptural panels celebrating traditional entertainments:
- Punch and Judy on this side, the pierrots from the end of the pier show on the other. If we don't want to walk along the prom., there's a road train, and up at the terminus there's a puffin called 'Cliff',
painted to show the cliffs of Flamborough and Bempton, and the birds and other things that live there. Back the other way, past our starting point and the promenade leads you into the sort of seafront that's all games arcades called 'Treasure Island' and sellers of highly coloured candy. But this opens up into a peaceful square, dominated by one of my favourite puffins:
Hannah Van Green's 'Kelp'. We paused here to draw breath, and to watch the gulls chasing each other about - could they have been adolescents trying to regain the attention of their adults? Refreshed, we took the steps down to the old harbour - and yes, there are more cafés, and you can go for a trip round the harbour on a (not full size) pirate ship, but there are also old fishing cobles and peaceful evening light:
Point the camera in the other direction, and we're back with the lobster puffin:
And one last puffin from the seafront at Bridlington:
The motto of the British seaside holiday, Come rain or shine, by Carolyn Short.
The following morning we left the car charging at Aldi, and set off to explore Bridlington's old town. There didn't seem to be much of it: turn right at the traffic lights for Kirkgate, or turn left down High Street. I liked this little house squeezed in between its neighbours:
Doubling back, Kirkgate brought us to the museum - no time to visit today, but next time, we promised. Just one more puffin,though:
Kelly Hambly's Stories from the Coast, where every picture tells a story, and the grafitti drop hints at mermaid sightings and the fabled Humber bridge.
Clue-Ella Puffinella guards the entrance to an ice cream parlour, out of town:
We didn't stop for ice cream, but I wanted to include Clue-Ella because look! she has some books under her wing! And if I were given the task of decorating a blank puffin, that would surely be my starting point, the wonders of Penguin's Puffin imprint. In fact, the artists were given three themes, and 'A Tribute to Kaye Webb' would not fit any of them, but Michaela Goodale-Truelove has at least managed to include some books in her 'East Yorkshire themed' puffin.
On down the coast to Hornsea. We left the car on a charge point in the car park (hooray!) and the first puffin wasn't far away:
Puffins within puffins! Puffin to the power of puffin! 'Puffin Power' by Lynne Hollingsworth.
My compliments to Hornsea's Urban Gardeners, whose work brightened the walk along the front to the Floral Hall, in whose Sensory Garden we found my other favourite puffin:
My initial reaction to OJamin's Nuffin' for the Puffin was a misreading; I just liked the decorative pattern:
Since this depicts puffins swimming through a sea of litter, it would be more appropriate to be horrified by it. I was quite embarrassed when I worked this out. Then I thought, oh, well, good point, attractively made and got over myself.
This was the high point of the trip. We scraped up a couple more puffins, we visited a shrine to Hornsea Pottery in an outlet mall just out of town, and we obeyed our satnav and took what felt like a very long way home, and left us interestingly low on charge. But I'll end with the picture which I think is the reductio ad absurdum of photographing your lunch (chocolate and orange cake, very good, at Lily's Bearch Café), while at the same time perfectly conveying the message THAT'S ALL, FOLKS!
durham_rambler to a conference about the World Heritage site; instead, I will try to make some progress with stalled posts...So here's that long-promised explanation for the enigmatic puffin of Bridlington, which has been sitting here, ninety per cent complete but untouched for exactly a month. That's got to be a good sign ...
The explanation has already been partly over taken by events, of course, since it starts with us finally taking delivery of our new, electric car - and you know all about that! We had ordered it at the very end of last year, knowing even then that we would have to wait for it - there's a world chip shortage, and it had to be imported from China - but expecting delivery in the spring... Then we thought we'd have it by midsummer: we certainly hadn't planned to drive the old car all the way to the north coast, and doing so gave us a few anxious moments. After that, we gave up expecting anything: it would arrive when it arrived... And finally in September it did arrive, and of course we had to try it out.
So we planned a short jaunt, nothing ambitious, well within its range, with an overnight and some seaside... And it just so happens that the tourism organisations for the Yorkshire coast (I was very happy to learn that there is once again an East Riding Council) were attempting to prolong the season with a Puffin Trail. This isn't an original idea: you distribute a number of blank - I suppose you can call them sculptures - and invite artists to decorate them, and visitors to collect them. I've seen elephants in the past, and Paddington Bears. But as we know, puffins are best ...
We started at the most northerly point of the trail. Sarah Dalton's The Balance of Threat and Hope is stationed at the RSPB visitor centre at Bempton Cliffs - that is, the point on the trail where you can, in season, see actual puffins:
It's one of the subtler designs: from a distance the painting is realistic, but close-up you can see fishing fleets, wind turbines, sand eels, suggestions of the threats and hopes ahead. It meets the brief given to the artists (the three themes were endangered wildlife of the coasts and seas, global warming and green energy, and people and stories of the East Yorkshire coast) but it treats the bird as a subject in its own right, not just a canvas. The puffins get stranger, and some of them wear it better than others...
I thought I was being self-indulgent in the pursuit of puffins (as I'm being self-indulgent now in recording it), but
durham_rambler had downloaded an app, and became very enthusiastic about scanning each puffin we saw, to add it to his tally. So we made a couple of stops in the Flamborough area, to scoop up outliers, but our destination was Bridlington, where there were numerous puffins and we had accordingly booked an overnight. All I knew about Bridlington was that it was one of those seaside towns where trades unions used to hold their conferences: hence the 'Bridlington agreement' (not to poach each other's membership). But the first sight was promising: Emily Jayne Kaan's Starlet gazes out over the promenade.This is the classic seaside aspect of the town. The promenade even has sculptural panels celebrating traditional entertainments:
- Punch and Judy on this side, the pierrots from the end of the pier show on the other. If we don't want to walk along the prom., there's a road train, and up at the terminus there's a puffin called 'Cliff',
painted to show the cliffs of Flamborough and Bempton, and the birds and other things that live there. Back the other way, past our starting point and the promenade leads you into the sort of seafront that's all games arcades called 'Treasure Island' and sellers of highly coloured candy. But this opens up into a peaceful square, dominated by one of my favourite puffins:
Hannah Van Green's 'Kelp'. We paused here to draw breath, and to watch the gulls chasing each other about - could they have been adolescents trying to regain the attention of their adults? Refreshed, we took the steps down to the old harbour - and yes, there are more cafés, and you can go for a trip round the harbour on a (not full size) pirate ship, but there are also old fishing cobles and peaceful evening light:
Point the camera in the other direction, and we're back with the lobster puffin:
And one last puffin from the seafront at Bridlington:
The motto of the British seaside holiday, Come rain or shine, by Carolyn Short.
The following morning we left the car charging at Aldi, and set off to explore Bridlington's old town. There didn't seem to be much of it: turn right at the traffic lights for Kirkgate, or turn left down High Street. I liked this little house squeezed in between its neighbours:
Doubling back, Kirkgate brought us to the museum - no time to visit today, but next time, we promised. Just one more puffin,though:
Kelly Hambly's Stories from the Coast, where every picture tells a story, and the grafitti drop hints at mermaid sightings and the fabled Humber bridge.
Clue-Ella Puffinella guards the entrance to an ice cream parlour, out of town:
We didn't stop for ice cream, but I wanted to include Clue-Ella because look! she has some books under her wing! And if I were given the task of decorating a blank puffin, that would surely be my starting point, the wonders of Penguin's Puffin imprint. In fact, the artists were given three themes, and 'A Tribute to Kaye Webb' would not fit any of them, but Michaela Goodale-Truelove has at least managed to include some books in her 'East Yorkshire themed' puffin.
On down the coast to Hornsea. We left the car on a charge point in the car park (hooray!) and the first puffin wasn't far away:
Puffins within puffins! Puffin to the power of puffin! 'Puffin Power' by Lynne Hollingsworth.
My compliments to Hornsea's Urban Gardeners, whose work brightened the walk along the front to the Floral Hall, in whose Sensory Garden we found my other favourite puffin:
My initial reaction to OJamin's Nuffin' for the Puffin was a misreading; I just liked the decorative pattern:
Since this depicts puffins swimming through a sea of litter, it would be more appropriate to be horrified by it. I was quite embarrassed when I worked this out. Then I thought, oh, well, good point, attractively made and got over myself.
This was the high point of the trip. We scraped up a couple more puffins, we visited a shrine to Hornsea Pottery in an outlet mall just out of town, and we obeyed our satnav and took what felt like a very long way home, and left us interestingly low on charge. But I'll end with the picture which I think is the reductio ad absurdum of photographing your lunch (chocolate and orange cake, very good, at Lily's Bearch Café), while at the same time perfectly conveying the message THAT'S ALL, FOLKS!
