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Flamborough

Flamborough's one of the great gems of the Yorkshire Coast, and has so much going for it, and so much variety to offer this could be rather a long page.

So let's start with what it is.  It's a head, or headland, which is bypassed by the main coast road. At its heart is the village of Flamborough, to the North is the North Landing, to the South the South Landing, to the East the lighthouses and to the West, Dane's Dyke, an ancient defensive earthwork stretching from one coast to the other.

And that's for starters, let's not forget to throw in the famous Bempton Cliffs bird reserve, the delightful Sewerby Hall, and, oh yes, it's also the birthplace of the American Navy. 

With so much to go on, the question is where to start, and the answer must be Flamborough Village with its fine collection of hostelries.

Flamborough Village

As I mentioned in the introduction, Flamborough Head is bypassed by the coast road, which means the village has still retained a semi-rural feel. It's nice, it's gentle and it's peaceful. It's not unspoilt, there's too many cars for that, but the pace of life is slow, and the tourists are mainly young families or retired folk staying at the caravan parks nearby. Because of that they tend to be on foot which means there isn't too much traffic about.

So what is there in the village? Well, there's a useful assortment of shops including an excellent greengrocers, a couple of nice cafes, lots of holiday accommodation, two chip shops virtually next door to each other, a really good chinese takeaway, and to cap it all a selection of pubs to please everybody. All the pubs serve good real ale, don't ask me to remember which served which, that's asking too much, but rest assured I had an excellent weekend investigating them all. So here it is, the non-definitive hazily remembered guide to the pubs of Flamborough.

	The Seabirds This is just a few yards outside the village centre and at first glance looks a little less attractive than some of the others. But don't be fooled; it has a restaurant attached as well as serving meals in the bar, and serves excellent food well above the usual run of the mill pub grub. It's just a little bit upmarket, but not pretentious or stuffy in any way. The staff were very friendly and very efficient, even the waitress that thought fish was a vegetarian option!  I had a vegetarian pudding here, a sort of giant suet pudding crammed with spinach, pine nuts, cheese and all sorts of stuff. Obviously it wasn't suet, but it was first rate and very filling. After that we repaired to the bar for a quiet pint before waddling home. Highly recommended for the food, but not the cheapest option in town.
	The Royal Dog & Duck A huge pub right in the middle of the village. It's a sprawling place with a big courtyard as well. When I last visited (2007) it was under new ownership and they allowed dogs and children in. The food was of the cheap and cheerful pile it high variety. Very large portions, except that we both made the mistake of ordering vegetarian lasagnes, which were half the size of the meat ones. Shame really, as I had tried to order a meat one but the waitress got very confused at taking the order for one meat and one vegetarian.
	The Ship Right opposite The Royal Dog & Duck, The Ship is a long thin pub where they often have bands on a weekend. We stayed here a couple of years ago in an attic bedroom with a sloping ceiling: until then I never realised just how useful a sloping ceiling could be. The thought of it still brings a smile to my face today. Food as I recall was typical pub grub, the Heavy Metal covers band were mind-numbingly loud and the atmosphere and beer were good.
	The Rose & Crown Half way down the main street, The Rose & Crown has traditionally been a local pub, but is now positioning itself as more mainsteam. It's very much like a local, with a nice atmosphere and good beer.  They had a steak night last time I visited and fine indeed it was.
	The Flaneburg Hotel A hotel rather than a pub, located just outside the village on the road to North Landing. I had Sunday lunch here one weekend and it was jolly good. Nice ingredients well cooked. They do have a website, but be careful if you visit as there's some very dubious code embedded in the home page.
	The Thornwick Sea Farm Holiday Centre This is a holiday camp just off the road to North Landing after the Flaneburg. It has three bars, all Tetley's as I recall, and has "turns" and bingo and such like. It also has big screen TVs; so if you're in Flamborough and need to see the big game, it's the only place to be. There's also a half decent cafe and a chippy. If you're on foot, use the footpath in from the corner of the site.
	The Viking Hotel A few minutes walk outside the village, this is a huge pub aiming itself largely at the nearby caravan site. It has a children's room and the main room itself is cavernous. The beer is cheap but it's Sam Smith's, and the food is typical cheap pub grub. There's a climbing frame for kids, and last I knew they ran a minibus service to get merry campers back to the caravan site - what a good idea that is.  There's a kids playground and now they've built some little bungalows round the back.
	The North Star More a hotel than a pub, and the only one on this page I haven't yet visited. It looks well kept though, and that's always a good sign, and it had quite an exciting menu on view. The hotel is outside the village, almost at North Landing. Popular with birders visiting Bempton, and the website has some good information for birders.
	The Caravel Bar This isn't in Flamborough village at all, it's actually at North Landing. Like a refugee from the 1970's it perches there doing its very best to impersonate the Concert Room of a Working Mens Club . It's dated, dated, very, very dated. But it does have the most magnificent view, and when the wind is howling and the spray flying it's a wonderful place to be. And the beer's passable too.  Don't think they do food, but there's a 1970's retro cafe next door.

North Landing

we've already mentioned North Landing. It's the home of the Caravel Bar(above), and used to be the home of the lifeboat. This rigid lifeboat  was replaced in 1992 by an inflatable which now operates from South Landing. The replacement caused a huge schism in the community, but time seems to have vindicated the RNLI's decision. The original crew argued that the heavy seas here were not suitable for an inflatable, but with the decline of fishing and the increase in leisure the new boat seems better suited. In fact, the dispute was so bitter that most of the original crew resigned.

There's a council car park here, or for cheaper parking go to Thornwick Bay (signposted from the road), and use the footpath to  walk round to here. It's a lovely walk but you do need to be fit and active.

The beach at North Landing is all pebbles, and there are some magnificent caves to explore. There's a small sort of sandy beach just round the corner at Thornwick Bay, but if you're looking for a beach you're in the wrong place, you should be at Filey or Bridlington. There's also generally a bloke selling shellfish.

South Landing

This is a lot less spectacular than North Landing, but just as nice in a gentler sort of way. It doesn't have the dramatic scenery of North Landing, but it has a lovely wooded ravine leading down to the beach. It's home to the new lifeboat which can generally be seen practicing around ten on a Sunday morning. And just as importantly, the lifeboat station is open for a large part of the Summer, and they sell ice cream.  There's a large car park on the cliff top with steps down to the beach, or you can follow the lane down to the lifeboat house and the beach. You can easily walk from here round to Dane's Dyke or all the way into Brid.

Dane's Dyke

This is hard to  miss if you're on foot, but travelling by car you may not even notice it. It's a massive earth bank and ditch, about three miles long  running the full width of the headland from North to South. The picture shows the Southern end. Obviously it was a defensive structure, but just how much manpower must have been needed to construct it?  Archaeologists are pretty much undecided about its origins, except that they do agree it wasn't built by the Vikings. The two current theories are that it may be Neolithic (circa Stonehenge), or possibly post Roman.

Anyhow, most of it is on private land, but the part to the South of the Bridlington Road (B1255) is a nature reserve with a car park, a small council run cafe and lots of nature trails. It's possible to walk on the part to the North of the Bridlington Road, but it's not a public footpath so discretion is required. It's worth a visit though as there are deer in the woods and it's remarkably beautiful. According to Wikipedia it's also used for satanic rituals, so carry a cross and a stake if you walk there on Halloween. Just goes to show, don't believe everything you read in Wikipedia.

Lighthouses

There are two lightouses at Flamborough, located at the tip of Flamborough Head, to the east of Flamborough village. The first one is a white octagonal tower dating from 1674. This is probably the oldest surviving lighthouse in England and was erected  by Sir John Clayton as a money making scheme. He was given permission to build it by Charles II and planned to charge vessels passing the headland. Sort of a toll lighthouse. How he intended to actually achieve this I have no idea, especially as lighthouses are only useful when you can't see. He went bankrupt before it came into use, so it's quite likely it was never used at all.

The second lighthouse (the new lighthouse) was built in 1806 and vertically extended in 1925. I went on a guided tour a couple of years ago and it's highly recommended. The construction looks as if it's made of giant blocks, but instead it's like a shingle wall that's been rendered and grooved to look like blocks. A most unusual construction method even for its day.

There's toilets and a decent cafe here, which makes it a nice stopping off point if you're walking round the headland.

Bempton Cliffs

The RSPB reserve at Bempton Cliffs is on the North coast of Flamborough Head. You can get there by driving (it's signposted from Bempton) or by walking in either direction along the coast. The reserve is on top of the massive chalk cliffs, but they are all fenced, so it's reasonably safe for children. There's official viewpoints everywhere, and the cliffs are literally covered in different types of seagulls. There are Gannets, Kittiwakes and Guillemots by the thousand, and quite a few puffins. If you're not a birdwatcher it's basically a lot of people staring at a lot of seagulls. Watching the people with their huge binoculars, telescopes and cameras is definitely more interesting than watching a bunch of seagulls flying about. The one exception to that is the puffins, because they're undeniably wonderful. You will be able to see them with the naked eye, but binoculars are pretty much de-rigeur. And the place smells something rotten; very little kids can be a bit put-off by that. Apart from the cliffs, there's a visitor centre here, which is stuffed with cuddly puffins, carved puffins, pictures of puffins, books about puffins and puffin memorabilia. No oven-ready puffins though; think they're missing a trick there. It costs a couple of quid to park, but if you've walked entry's free.

Walking

Flamborough is really good for walking. For openers it's flat which is always good, but at North Landing, South Landing and Dane's Dyke trails have been laid out and well signposted. Most of the trails have carved signposts to show you the way.

Apart from that there's a footpath going right round the headland, and you can walk along the cliffs all the way to Bridlington in one direction or Filey in the other.

The only real disappointment is that you can't officially walk all the way along Dane's Dyke. Now wouldn't that make a great lottery project. Or it would if the lottery weren't spending every penny on building white elephants for the 2012 olympics.

If you only have time for one walk, visit the car park at the Southern end of Dane's Dyke. That way you get a mixture of cliffs and woodland with plenty of parking and a cafe.