KAREN AND RAYS TRAVELS: 295 June and July 2018 Azores & Farne Islands.

16th June 2018

The Azores.
My brother Bruce and sister in law invited us to go away with them to the Azores for a week in June 18. It is not a place I would have gone to of my own accord but they had booked a large house there so we decided to go along for a sort of family holiday and it would help them out with the cost.

The 16th of June came along and we all set off from Stansted and the holiday had begun. Before long we were stuffing our faces with ice cream on the beautiful island of Sao Miguel in the middle of the Atlantic ocean.

We had hired a couple of cars and were pretty free to come and go as couples but we decided to stick together and go touring. Lynn had been to the island before and knew a lot of the places to go so she took charge as team leader.

The first day was spent just touring the island, having local grub and local beverages. The second day was a lot more exiting and we went whale watching. Karen and I were sceptical about this having been on several similar trips before and seen nothing. However today we were in for a treat. We saw some sperm whales, some hump back whales, lots of bottle nosed dolphins and a sea turtle.

Hump Back whale resting

Hump Back whale diving for food.

Dolphins playing in the bow wave of the boat.

Much the holiday was filled with touring the island and in doing so we visited a vlocanic area that was so hot, the local restaurants would bring their cooking pots around, bury them in purpose made holes in the ground and retrieve them a few hours later, all cooked and ready to serve.

A chef retrieving his cooking pot from underground.

Steam and bubbling volcanic mud.

We also visited some hot volcanic baths. They were very hot, 39 dec C and stank of sulphur.

The hot volcanic baths.

27th June 2018
We were invited to visit our new friends, Sally and Kevin to go and visit the Farne Islands in Northumberland. We jumped in Gromit, our camper van, and we joined them at a camp site at a small town called Seahouses just near the Farn islands.

We organised a boat trip and sadly, Sally and Kevin could not come as Sally has a phobia about birds fluttering. So, probably not a good idea for her to visit a bird sanctuary then!

The trip was amazing and the bird life was just incredible. We stopped on one of the island that although it is a sanctuary, the National Trust has placed walkways for the general public to get a good look at the airborne wildlife.

They reccomend wearing a hat of some sort and we soon found out why. The birds with young will attack peoples heads and make them bleed. Aside from the the birds we saw were, puffins, razor bills, arctic terns and cormorants. The pictures are shown below.

Arctic tern.

Humping Puffins.

These guys live underground. One emereging from her burrow.

Cormorant.

Razor bills and a chick.

Puffin in classic fishing mode.

One in a burrow.

Thousands of black headed gulls.

We were advised to wear a hat. Here,s why!

This cheeky sod just parked himself.

10th July 2018
Today the RAF became 100 years old having been formally formed in 1918. I hasten to add that 7 years earlier they were part of Gods own Royal Engineers !
The RAF had a formal fly past that had the big planes and jets form up near Ipswich and fly in via
Colchester and Chelmsford to line up with a final fly past over the Mall to salute the Queen.

We decided to work out a place that the planes would pass over and to be fair, we got it spot on and ended up in the middle of a field and right under the flight path. It was awesome. Being an ex squaddie and having flown in (and jumped out of) many of the planes, it was a bit emotional for me.