Rebecca introduces classmates to the North East coastline
Many of the members of my lab at University will be finishing their PhD’s this year before heading back to their respective countries and and getting on with their careers and lives. Before they all left I wanted to make sure they saw a proper bit of the UK coastline and had a holiday the way it should be had; with a bucket and spade and fish and chips on the beach! What better accommodation for such a trip than sleeping under canvas. Alas, my old 8 person tent had seen too many trips to be of use so with begging, stealing and borrowing (and a small trip to GO Outdoors for bargain tents!) we managed to get enough to sleep us all.
Even though I did encourage a practice erecting of tents before the trip we had a row of four tents being put up in the strangest manner possible, often back to front with advice being thrown about like it was going out of fashion, and the wind did not help. I do believe we must have been the entertainment of the weekend for many a camper on site that day! However after an hour or so we had four well erected tents and headed to Filey beach for a day of sandcastle building, fish and chip eating and ice cream munching. An evening with a BBQ and an open fire (in a spare wheel with diesel doused wood provided by the site owner!) finished the day off nicely.
Armed with a stomach full of ‘breakfast in a bun’ we successfully packed away the tents (well, we’ll see when they next come out!) before a day at Flamborough Head beach before the long drive home and back to work in the lab. A fantastic weekend had by all, and the north east coast was said to be the best bit of coast any of my labmates had seen in the UK!
Rebecca Smith
Loughborough
