31st August 2018. Skipsea, England.

This morning we woke up in our motorhome after a very good night’s sleep and got ready to go for breakfast with our son Gethan.  We stepped out of the van into the car park of the restaurant where our son works.  His boss had kindly agreed to let us stay there overnight.  I phoned Gethan to check he was awake and I got incoherent mumbling but at least I knew he was awake.

He stumbled out of the house as we knocked on his door and only started to join in the conversation after he’d eaten his breakfast at the local cafe.  The food was very nice.

After we’d eaten we went back to his new home for a short while but eventually we had to say goodbye because we were worried that we’d overstay our welcome at the restaurant.  I hate saying goodbye to our boys especially as I don’t know when we’ll next see Gethan.

As we arrived back at the van a young man walked towards us and, realising we were the owners of the motorhome, he stopped to speak to us.  We told him we’d been given permission to park there but he said he’d been worried because he thought we were still asleep inside the van and he thought he might have disturbed us just now when he was emptying the bottles into bin.  What a thoughtful person.

We left Derby, taking A and B roads only and stopped off at the Visitor Centre beside the Humber bridge, as usual it took a while for us to find what we were looking for, the SAT NAV sent us into a narrow, busy car park by the tile museum and Tesco where people watched with amusement as Darren turned the van round in the confined space, my hero did it effortlessly, thank goodness.

We then drove down another road that ended in a car park, unfortunately it had a height barrier and once again Darren had to reverse in a confined space, that was when we noticed the Visitor Centre across the other side of the stream! AH! HA! Retracing our steps THIS time we drove down the road that ran BEHIND Tesco and arrived at the place we were looking for.  It was well worth it.  I took loads of photos!

The view over to the bridge was beautiful, we could see the marks left in the silt from the current.

A nice lady stopped to chat, she was surprised I wasn’t taking lots of photos of the river but Darren informed her I’d already taken around forty (we discovered later that he had underestimated the amount I had actually taken!).  She told us she lived in a retirement village just along the road which backed on to the nature reserve so she walked by the river every day.  She said she was visited by a pair of geese every year, they would breed then fly away when their brood were mature enough to go their own way, what a lovely thing to witness.  She also told us about her sister who lives in France and who was selling her French properties to come home along with her Moroccan husband.  She was a nice chatty lady and eventually realising her husband and Grandson had disappeared she said her goodbyes and set off along the path just as her Grandson scooted back to find her.

We went into the Waterside Visitor Centre where we had a yummy cheese and mushroom omelette and salad.  The staff there were nice and cheerful.  Afterwards we wandered through the beautifully designed building and looked at the information display about the area which was very interesting.

On the way back to the van I took yet more photos, you can never have too many photos of boats, can you!

We drove for another hour to our stop for the next three nights at Mr Moo’s.  It became quite important that we got our skates on, the SAT NAV said we’d arrive at 16.20 and the shop on Mr Moo’s site shut at 17.00, the reason it was important to get there before closing time was that it was an ice cream shop (which is why I chose the site).

We got there by the skin of our teeth and a friendly man showed us to our pitch, which was enormous. He told me Darren would still be able to get his ice cream because the take away window was open until 17.20! Phew!

That was very lucky because Darren went to plug the van into the electric hook up and spent ages talking to another motorhomer who was pitched there.

When he’d finished ‘gas bagging’ we rushed over to the take away window and made our choices.  The ice cream was superb AND our tubs were full to bursting (we’ve arrived in ice cream heaven!).  We bought coffee as well and sat and stuffed our faces with the gorgeous ice cream.  We’ve decided that it beats Wernigerode in our ice cream poll thereby taking first place, tying with our local ice cream shop, Dylan’s in Haslemere (where we can often be found sampling the wares) as the best ice cream we’ve ever tasted.

Stuffed full of ice cream we went for a walk down to the beach to burn off some fat (Ha! Ha! Ha!) and watched flocks of birds rising and landing on the fields and trees, unfortunately we didn’t have our binoculars (as usual) so we’ve no idea what they were although one small flock in the bushes looked like goldfinches.

There were a lot of pillboxes scattered around in the area.

I then took loads of photos of the landscape and we watched a tractor baling the rows of straw that were neatly lining the huge field.

Our day was great and when we got back to the van I took photos of some baby rabbits who would suddenly spring up in the air and race around. Their mum eventually came out to see what they were all up to.  While I was photographing them the man Darren had been talking to came back from walking this dog and he started chatting to us.

He’d noticed our van was left hand drive so we chatted about that and when I mentioned the broken wrong mirror he pointed to the metal plate on the roof of his van (which I’d assumed was part of the design) apparently he’d been taking evasive action down a narrow country lane when a branch had pierced the front of the bed section, whoops!  It had happened while he was in Devon, it was suggested he asked a local mechanic to help him out of his predicament which he did and the man did him proud, it looks great.

After we’d chatted for quite a while (during which time the man told me about a lovely CL just outside of York and a museum called The Bowes museum at Barnard Castle, which looks very interesting, I hope we get to visit it) he told me he and his wife were leaving in the morning and we were welcome to have the bus timetable that had been printed off for him, I thought that was a kind thing for him to do, so now we have a bus timetable which could be very useful.

By the time we got back to our van the sun was going down so we closed the blinds, had a cup of tea and made plans for the following day.

I hope it’s as good as today has been.