My 69th Birthday
Birthday Camping Holiday at Haverigg.
Monday August the 4th. My wife and I packed the car and hooked on the Trailer Tent and headed off for a camping holiday at my favourite place in Britain. Haverigg, the little village situated at the southern tip of Cumberland at the mouth of the Duddon River and beneath the shadow of Black Coombe, the brooding hill a couple of feet short of a mountain. This was not just a holiday to enjoy the wonders of the British Countryside, it was also to search for lost friends and revive memories of when I was stationed here as a National Serviceman in the Army and when I lived here in the sixties and seventies. Our two pets were as usual with us and packed ‘snug as bugs in a rug’ in the back of the car, that’s Dixie and Asbo, the two tortoises, they come with us when we are away from home for more than a day.
The driving up the M6 was quite easy with the traffic being moderate; thankfully we were heading north because the southbound traffic was congested in places, especially in the Preston, Lancaster area.
It was a glorious day when we set off, the sun beamed down between fluffy white clouds but as we progressed north the clouds increased but not threatening rain. Sadly on reaching Cumberland and viewing from the top of Grizebeck, the mountains had a covering of low clouds, even Black Coombe was topped with a soft misty cloud.
We arrived at the Butterflowers Caravan and camping grounds and paid £62 for five nights, this is quite a bargain in comparison to £50 a night for a Bed and Breakfast at Bempton last month to see the Sea birds at the Cliffs.
Our Trailer Tent isn’t one of those fancy modern types, in-fact it’s an ‘an-twacky’ ancient model and an absolute terror to erect. It took us two hours to completely sort out, eventually everything was in its place and the bed blown up and ready for two tired pensioners to retire to later on.
At 16.30 Just after Christine, our friend from the BF paid a brief visit we decided to go for a little walk and what a shock I got when I collected my walking boots. At home I keep my two pairs of walking boots under the stairs and in my haste this morning I had picked up the right foot of each pair. Honest, I felt a right ‘Twit’ and quite disappointed. We still went for the walk, but wearing my best shoes prevented me from walking off the track into the dunes. We decided to walk along the beach and we searched among the cobbled stones looking for my special stone, the one I took to Australia with me many years ago and had it cut and polished. The tide was right out and the sea birds were flying way in the distance, Arctic Terns emitting their unmistakeable sound as they dived into the channel between Cumbria and the Duddon Sands near Walney Island, Barrow in Furness. A lone Curlew called a long way out in the estuary, the haunting call of mud flats and Moorland Hills. The sun shone down lovely and warm and burned off the clouds from the mountains leaving them coloured a pale shade of blue. We didn’t find any of my unusual stones but there were other colourful stones that took our fancy and will be added to our collection. I wonder what the attraction is for people on holidays to take home a souvenir stone or Shell. At this School holiday period the campsites are almost full of laughing and squealing children and people with their dogs. Close to our tent was a couple with two children and two huge Bullmastiffs that periodically bayed with their deep resonating bark, a sound that sends shivers up ones spine, and caused Ann to ask me to chaperone her when going to the toilets. Mind you I think the drooling dogs were so soft that they would have licked us to death.
Pictures from the left Commador Hotel from the bird hide. Juvenile Stonechat. Mouth of the Lazy river. Church at Millom. Seaview and Blackcoombe in the background.
B 
