Today was all about tracing the family ancestors on my grandfather’s side. We tracked our way from Driffield to Nafferton, then Burton Agnes to Bridlington. In Driffield we wandered through the main street which was also market day. The people were friendly. We bought flowers, bananas, strawberries, cheese and homemade biscuits. We stopped for a cup of tea and a scone and it was a beautiful sunny day. The locals were wearing short sleeve shirts. We tourists were still wearing our Kathmandu couture but enjoying the blue skies.

Then in Nafferton we explored a marvellous churchyard, scanning the gravestones for names we were looking for. No luck. But amazingly we hit pay dirt in Burton Agnes at the local church where my mother spied the gravestone of a long lost relative of which very little is known. We wandered through the church itself where a number of ancestors had married, some before they left for Australia.

Next stop was Bridlington, where we wandered down to the seafront, marvelled at the absolute stereotypical Englishness of it all – the fun parlours, the rides, the seagulls, the ice cream and lolly shops and the saucy postcards. We ate a monster lunch. Each plate could have fed three people. My roast beef came with a Yorkshire pudding, two scoops of mashed potato, two pieces of roast potato, carrot, cauliflower, peas, cabbage and gravy. Carbohydrates ahoy!

Then we walked around the churchyard of a stunning 900 year old Priory searching for the gravestone of Tamar Stephenson who died in the early 1900s, but no luck. By then the day was coming to end, so we drove home to Wold Newton via Filey which had some magnificent old seaside hotels in various states of repair.

Tomorrow, Whitby!