So woke up and had breakfast. The Met Office had said that the day would be cloudy but dry (one of the reasons we came up here) so of course it was pouring with rain. Ho hum. So our idea of leaving the car at the hotel and walking around the town and up to the abbey went and instead we drove to the abbey. And looked at the walk through the rain and said ‘forget this’. We’ll come back to Whitby to see the abbey.<\/p>\n
So we headed into the moors – down loads of teeny little one lane roads with two lane traffic. Didn’t have too many cars on the road luckily. We went along various little roads, ending up at\u00a0 Glaisdale, where we saw some parking under the railway bridge. So we swerved into that and parked. Saw a little bridge that was marked 1609 but was probably built earlier. Lovely. We then took the path toward Egton Bridge, which ended up at a road and we decided not to walk along the road and turned back. We then drove through various little places to the Moors Visitors’ Centre in Danby. Had tea and scones and a look around the shop. Headed out to the bird hide but there was more activity behind the hide so we watched that and then carried on along the walk. It was starting to rain again so we got back in the car and decided to drive over the moors towards Rosedale – we’d seen the forest and farming bits and decided to try out the actual moors. Despite the rain it was quite pretty and we saw several standing stones and crosses. The road we wanted was marked as closed but we decided to try it anyway (Joe said it said ‘line painting’ and, as it is Sunday and pouring it down with rain, we figured no line painting was going on – we were right, and wrong).<\/p>\n
So down this little road and there was another road closed sign next to a pull off. So we pulled off and sat for a bit watching the rain. Only to have a golden plover land in the heater and watch us. So we watched it. And Joe took photos. We got out as the rain slacked off and could hear loads of them around us. When the bird flew off we decided, as there was a large gap between the road closed signs, to carry on.<\/p>\n
Went on a bit further and off to one side there was loads of movement – a bird attacking a lamb. Which was interesting so an emergency stop and Joe jumps out with camera and we watch. Turns out it was a lapwing chasing off a lamb that had probably just strayed too close to a nest. We watched the lapwings for a while and Joe probably got some excellent photos. Especially as he was getting them to try to get him to leave!<\/p>\n
On a bit further and there was a family of grouse. Little babies scurrying around through the heather and more photos. Then a shadow of a bird, another lapwing but because we stopped we saw a hare. Which took off and disappeared as they do. Then an odd bird just sitting on a stump. Just as Joe got ready to take a photo it flew off. And another road closed sign but this one was small and by the side of the road so we carried on. Only to come up to a huge fence, large signs warning of corrosive salt, and no way to go but back the way we’d come.\u00a0 However, that was the best bit of wildlife we saw all day and we figure as the road was closed things were coming closer to the road.<\/p>\n
Since we couldn’t get to Rosedale we headed on out of the moors and along to Thirsk, James Herriott country, and on to Ripton. By this time it was pouring with rain so we headed back to Thirsk, more hotels, and are now\u00a0 in the hotel bar relaxing.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
So woke up and had breakfast. The Met Office had said that the day would be cloudy but dry (one of the reasons we came up here) so of course it was pouring with rain. Ho hum. So our idea of leaving the car at the hotel and walking around the town and up to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4T97-66","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":382,"url":"https:\/\/www.purple-penguin.org\/blog\/2010\/06\/14\/fountains\/","url_meta":{"origin":378,"position":0},"title":"Fountains","date":"Monday, 14 June 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"Had a lovely dinner and more drinks then off to bed. Up in the morning and sorted to head to Ripon and Fountain Abbey. It was still grey and cloudy but mostly dry and we had a walk around Thirsk before heading out. Saw the market set up and had\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Travel"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":4289,"url":"https:\/\/www.purple-penguin.org\/blog\/2025\/12\/10\/and-home-again-2\/","url_meta":{"origin":378,"position":1},"title":"And Home Again","date":"Wednesday, 10 December 2025","format":false,"excerpt":"Got up way too early, packed too early, down to check out too early. Got the hotel to get us a taxi, too early, so were at the airport far too early. The ride back to the airport was interesting - none of the tiny little roads, just the main\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Travel"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":374,"url":"https:\/\/www.purple-penguin.org\/blog\/2010\/06\/12\/off-to-slimbridge\/","url_meta":{"origin":378,"position":2},"title":"Off to Slimbridge","date":"Saturday, 12 June 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"So, Joe is doing a photography day at Slimbridge on Tuesday so we had to hire a car. Since we were going to have a car we decided to take the weekend and have a look around. I thought somewhere near Slimbridge to be there for Tuesday and have a\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Travel"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":269,"url":"https:\/\/www.purple-penguin.org\/blog\/2009\/06\/14\/loch-awe\/","url_meta":{"origin":378,"position":3},"title":"Loch Awe","date":"Sunday, 14 June 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"Saturday 13 June So got into Glasgow and started trying to find how to get to the airport - hired the car from the airport so we wouldn't have to drive through Glasgow! After running about looking for the bus stop, we finally found it, just as the bus drove\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Frog Blog"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":4213,"url":"https:\/\/www.purple-penguin.org\/blog\/2020\/01\/07\/end-of-the-road-trip\/","url_meta":{"origin":378,"position":4},"title":"End of the Road Trip","date":"Tuesday, 7 January 2020","format":false,"excerpt":"We decided to drive to Sydney via the last bit of the Coast Road that we could safely do. So we checked out of the hotel in Wollongong and made our way to the Grand Pacific Drive. Leaving Wollongong behind we had to make to sharp right turns into various\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Travel"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":4187,"url":"https:\/\/www.purple-penguin.org\/blog\/2019\/12\/29\/road-trip-part-2-every-kind-of-road\/","url_meta":{"origin":378,"position":5},"title":"Road Trip Part 2 (every kind of road)","date":"Sunday, 29 December 2019","format":false,"excerpt":"So we have travelled on motorways, A roads, B roads, and C roads in Australia. We've also done sealed and unsealed (ie paved and unpaved) roads, as well as named and unnamed roads. All the roads. We left Victor Harbour after a walk about the area. We found a nice\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Travel"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.purple-penguin.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/378"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.purple-penguin.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.purple-penguin.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.purple-penguin.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.purple-penguin.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=378"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.purple-penguin.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/378\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":381,"href":"https:\/\/www.purple-penguin.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/378\/revisions\/381"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.purple-penguin.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=378"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.purple-penguin.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=378"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.purple-penguin.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=378"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}