The performing puffins of Amble
May. 30th, 2023 05:22 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shewhomustTen years ago, we went to Amble for the puffin festival. We had a great time; I don't know why it has taken us so long to go back. Saturday was bright and sunny, and I was feeling pretty much recovered from my cold, and a little stir crazy from all the events we had cancelled in the last week: so we headed up the coast to Amble.
We were welcomed to the festival by the cut-out puffin figures I remembered from last time - looking very spruce for their age - which made me feel very much at home. I was going to say that the festival was tiny but perfectly formed, but looking at the programme, I see how very much we just didn't do...
The Auckland Shanty Singers were doing their thing in the Town Square when we arrived, and we strolled around looking at the various craft stalls, many of which had made a real effort to offer puffin-themed items, which I appreciated, even if I wasn't tempted to buy. We spent longer than intended in conversation with the RSPB representative, who got off on the wrong foot with me: she had a script in which she invites questions, and then gives you the answer to what you ought to have asked. I wanted to know how the puffins are doing this year on nearby Coquet Island; she wanted to tell me that puffins are very endangered. She wanted to join us up as members on the spot, and we struggled to get away from the sales pitch, so we missed the start of some puffins being unexpectedly athletic (they must have been Bare Toed, I think: they certainly were bare toed):
First a duo of adults, then a puffling taking its first flight:
Well done, that puffling! Have some fish!
Mmm, fish... Time for lunch. We headed off to The Old Boat House, which appears to be the same business as the place we ate ten years ago, but in a new location, and very much busier. We were warned of an hour's wait for our lunch, and since we were sitting in the shade enjoying the bustle and the view, decided it would be worth it. Our scallops arrived within forty minutes, before I had even finished my half-pint of cider:
The staff were pleasant, the food was good, the sun was shining. Even so, we decided to head elsewhere, in search of ice cream for dessert. Our first attempt took us down a dead end, where I admired the paintwork on a lop-sided shed:
But soon enough we ended up at Spurrreli (we are creatures of habit):
The lurid pink is blood orange sorbet, and it is excellent, tangy and refreshing. Meanwhile, in the square, the shanty singers had been replaced by the band:
The programme suggests they may have been the Boffs, but the identification suggested by the internet is unconvincing. If I say that they were the perfect band to half hear on a sunny day, it sounds like a put-down, but I enjoyed the guitar riffs ringing out across the square. They both started and ended their set with the Byrds' So You Want to be a Rock and Roll Star and I have no complaints.
Over our ice cream, we studied the leaflet (you can just see it in the picture) about the Bord Waalk (that's 'Bird Walk' in standard English) "the internationally acclaimed sculpture trail in Amble." We couldn't leave town without checking out the Big Puffin, could we?
The whole project looks fun, especially now I've seen the description on the Fabulous North website. And I'm glad to have seen Ben Greenwood's Big Puffin - but I find it more disturbing than anything else. It's a puffin, but also not a puffin: the plumage but not the posture of a puffin. It's some other bird, which has put on a puffin costume but doesn't know how to stand to make it look realistic, and it has taken up a strategic position, from wich it can keep an eye on Coquet Island, summer home of so many puffins. What is it up to? (Also, it's hollow.)
This was quite enough puffin-related excitement for one day. After a not-very-satisfactory detour via Morrison's, we went home and dined on bread and cheese and a bottle of Rhône.
We were welcomed to the festival by the cut-out puffin figures I remembered from last time - looking very spruce for their age - which made me feel very much at home. I was going to say that the festival was tiny but perfectly formed, but looking at the programme, I see how very much we just didn't do...
The Auckland Shanty Singers were doing their thing in the Town Square when we arrived, and we strolled around looking at the various craft stalls, many of which had made a real effort to offer puffin-themed items, which I appreciated, even if I wasn't tempted to buy. We spent longer than intended in conversation with the RSPB representative, who got off on the wrong foot with me: she had a script in which she invites questions, and then gives you the answer to what you ought to have asked. I wanted to know how the puffins are doing this year on nearby Coquet Island; she wanted to tell me that puffins are very endangered. She wanted to join us up as members on the spot, and we struggled to get away from the sales pitch, so we missed the start of some puffins being unexpectedly athletic (they must have been Bare Toed, I think: they certainly were bare toed):
First a duo of adults, then a puffling taking its first flight:
Well done, that puffling! Have some fish!
Mmm, fish... Time for lunch. We headed off to The Old Boat House, which appears to be the same business as the place we ate ten years ago, but in a new location, and very much busier. We were warned of an hour's wait for our lunch, and since we were sitting in the shade enjoying the bustle and the view, decided it would be worth it. Our scallops arrived within forty minutes, before I had even finished my half-pint of cider:
The staff were pleasant, the food was good, the sun was shining. Even so, we decided to head elsewhere, in search of ice cream for dessert. Our first attempt took us down a dead end, where I admired the paintwork on a lop-sided shed:
But soon enough we ended up at Spurrreli (we are creatures of habit):
The lurid pink is blood orange sorbet, and it is excellent, tangy and refreshing. Meanwhile, in the square, the shanty singers had been replaced by the band:
The programme suggests they may have been the Boffs, but the identification suggested by the internet is unconvincing. If I say that they were the perfect band to half hear on a sunny day, it sounds like a put-down, but I enjoyed the guitar riffs ringing out across the square. They both started and ended their set with the Byrds' So You Want to be a Rock and Roll Star and I have no complaints.
Over our ice cream, we studied the leaflet (you can just see it in the picture) about the Bord Waalk (that's 'Bird Walk' in standard English) "the internationally acclaimed sculpture trail in Amble." We couldn't leave town without checking out the Big Puffin, could we?
The whole project looks fun, especially now I've seen the description on the Fabulous North website. And I'm glad to have seen Ben Greenwood's Big Puffin - but I find it more disturbing than anything else. It's a puffin, but also not a puffin: the plumage but not the posture of a puffin. It's some other bird, which has put on a puffin costume but doesn't know how to stand to make it look realistic, and it has taken up a strategic position, from wich it can keep an eye on Coquet Island, summer home of so many puffins. What is it up to? (Also, it's hollow.)
This was quite enough puffin-related excitement for one day. After a not-very-satisfactory detour via Morrison's, we went home and dined on bread and cheese and a bottle of Rhône.
