Well it has been one of those days where you wished you hadn't bothered. The forecast this week was overcast so we thought one day would be pretty much the same as any other so we decided to head to the North Yorkshire Railway to see the Flying Scotsman. Simon had looked on the map and we were heading for Levisham where we knew we could get onto the platform and the train would be travelling slowly. He failed to tell me about the near vertical, hairpin bendy, single track 2 miles of road that took us to the station ! Now anyone who knows me will know my hill driving skills are probably not as good as they should be! The road got worse and worse and with heavy traffic in both ways (yes on a single track with no passing places!), I felt physically sick by the time we had reached somewhere to park which was half a mile from the station so I was mardy before we had even seen the train. Anyway, we got a bench to ourselves on the platform and waited, the wind was biting through my thermals and 3 fleeces it was that cold. So with train approaching, a women who resembled a man mountain in a purple coat stood straight infront of us.....but the Flying Scotsman was approaching us with coal tender first anyway, so no nice 'front of train with steam' shots. Still it was nice to see. We decided to head to Scarborough next for this American Wigeon and med gulls but I was already in panic mode as I had the hill to negotiate and wished that I had not said 'I'll drive today'. The return journey was just as bad as we were in a convoy behind a muck spreader that took up the whole road and a trailer load of pigs that were all squealing. So, we just pulled into a gateway and gave them all 10 minutes to get up the hill at 2 mph. I am sure that a lot of clutches were smoking by the time they had reached the main road and one of them wasn't going to me mine !
Headed to Scarborough and the weather changed, this time we had thick pea sop fog to navigate through. The wigeon was exactly where it had been for weeks but a local was down there dog walking and his 2 dogs were running through the rock pools putting every single bird up......you really couldn't make this up. Next stop was Holbeck car park to eat the rest of our pack up with the med gulls that never fail but with even more rolling in fog after half an hour we could hardly see the benches !
Homeward bound, 200 miles on the clock but had quite an exciting, interesting day and Simon added 2 new birds to his year list.
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