Radio Silence

Well the plan was to blog daily but don't be surprised if you don't see any posts until Monday evening. 

Our next stop is Kielder Forest and reading the campsite blurb it suggests no mobile phone signal. Even worse, the only pub anywhere near is closed for refurbishment.

Gonna be a quiet weekend!

Whitby Museum - squirrelling away history

A quiet day today. We've toured all the shops, visited the major tourist sites, and drank in all of the pubs I had planned to visit. And, to be honest, we are more than a little concerned with Liz's hips and knees given that not only is everything up or down a steep slope but all the buildings seem to have their main rooms up a steep flight of stairs! 

We're getting a bit worn out, so a trip to Pannett Park today to see the museum and art gallery. Should have checked though, naturally Pannett Park is also on a steep slope! Even the squirrels are too cream-crackered to run away from us

The driving force behind the visit to the art gallery is the two Burne-Jones tapestries: 

Flora

and Pomona

that one taken at a bit of an angle to reduce light reflection.

There were some interesting other works by the Victorian Staithes artists and some modern artists but the gallery was quite small. 

The museum, by contrast, was ram-jam full of specimens and artifacts. I initially thought the £8 entrance fee might be a bit expensive but we could easily have spent all day in there! Fossils galore including plesiosaurs, icthyosaurs, a  dinosaur crocodile, dinosaur footprints and, of course, ammonites and other shell creatures by the hundreds. Then there was the stuffed bird collection, I hadn't realised for example just how large both Gyrfalcons and Great Northern Divers are. Then the archaeology from Neolithic to modern. Then Whitby Jet, including a stunning jet and ammonite chessboard. Then local history. Then African/Chinese et al artifacts. We then stumbled upon a case simple marked "A collection of diverse items" or something similar, not sure what everything was but there was definitely a gift from NASA signed by some astronaut (it was almost at floor level so impossible to read).

Getting on for two hours wasn't enough to see the main gallery properly, let alone the side galleries. Although we did pop up to see the costume display which turned out, unsurprisingly, to be mainly cyberpunk! 

Anyway if you like museums packed with curios, go to Whitby Museum, go in the morning and plan to lunch in the tea room! And don't miss the bizarrely macabre Hand Of Glory!

If you can't get there, check out its website: https://whitbymuseum.org.uk/

Because of the steeply undulating paths around the park we regrettably missed out on the dinosaur garden and the increasing rare floral clock but we did spot this in the South Sea Island sub-garden

So that's it, our last walk up the steep slope back to the campervan has been walked. But not without a tiny bit of excitement beforehand. We were just about to cross the swing bridge into town when a bell rang, a sudden hurrying of pedestrians told us to get a move on, the bridge is about to close  But only half needed to swing for the small boat

Shame I missed getting a picture of the boat!