Beautiful York

Above is Lendal Bridge at dawn. 

Stayed in York for a couple of days and left this morning. I picked up a rental car--a Kia hybrid. From York I drove to the Northumberland Coast (Vera country), where I am now ensconced in Seahouses. I'll stay here for a couple of nights. 

I had to leave York. Staying any longer might have killed me. Too much beauty, too many photos to take, and my left shoulder had been bothering me. Had a couple of Panadols and a bath this morning before I left York,  hoping to stave off the ache, but I could still feel it niggling there beneath the shoulder blade, even as I typed a draft of this blog entry. 

I'll have to limit myself to the smallest camera and lens today: no tripod or heavy birding lens. (That was my intention this morning, and it's very lucky that I'm so absent-minded that I left the camera in the car when I walked up to Whitby Abbey.) I took lots of photos with my phone, without the dire consequences I've suffered for the past couple of days when taking photos with my cameras.

Yesterday, as I told you, I booked a 4:00 pm boat ride up the river Ouse. York is very pretty, but the weather was extremely hot--30 degrees. The passengers were all wilting.

I sat next to a family with a couple of kids. One little boy looked as if he was burning up. His face was covered with red spots. He didn't seem to like the hat he was wearing and kept taking it off. I told the father that the little boy looked very hot. He nodded. Later his mother said: "He's got chicken pox. Have you had it?"

As the only solo traveller on the boat, I drew attention to myself, I suppose. There were families, couples, and couples of couples. I also looked a bit scruffier than the run of other grandmotherly types on board. I suppose I gave off the vibe of an ageing hippy. 

Well, I ordered and sipped my (slightly warm, unfortunately) Prosecco. And when the 45-minute trip was about to wind up, an Italian-Englishman who had ordered a bottle or two and hadn't managed to finish it all with his family, offered me a glass, at the behest of his wife.

We chatted, for some reason, in Spanish. --He started it. 

When I got back to shore, I walked down to to Sainsbury's to find some dinner, and, of course, a bottle of Prosecco. (It was really really tiny, just a couple of mouthfuls, but it did put me to sleep last night.) I woke up at 3 a.m. in my day clothes.

Have just arrived in Seahouses. So different driving here, though. When I drive in Oz, I'm always pulling over to the side of the road to take photos so my journeys always take nearly twice as long as planned. 

Here, there is no side of the road, so I just keep driving. Today I had to pass a double-decker bus on a road really only wide enough for one vehicle. I guess it's good that I couldn't stop anywhere because it's given my shoulder a break, and I have no pain at the moment. 

Ok, I'm going to wind this up with a rather moody shot of Whitby Abbey. It was inspiration for Dram Stoker to write "Dracula".