Bempton Cliffs would be an awesome sight even if they were lifeless – 400 feet of broken chalk plunging down into the North Sea to a graveyard of more than 200 ships.
But these great precipices, which run for almost four miles between Filey and Flamborough Head in the East Riding of Yorkshire, are also home to the largest accessible seabird colony in the United Kingdom, a raucous squawking, moaning, fluting, kitty-waking of at least 100,000 nests.
Though nest is a generous term for some of the open-air, ledge-based homes created between April and late July each year.
The fledglings here need to be made of stern stuff, too. Learn to fly? A nudge from mother, and young gannets, razorbills and puffins have a few seconds' freefall to pluck up the courage to spread their tiny wings.
Almost all do; and there is endless other, fascinating, behaviour to watch from a series of well-sited belvederes built by the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds. Even the most bored teenager or terrible two-year-old can be tempted to linger here, or befriend one of the many birders who are generous with their telescopes.
Watching has been part of this landscape for centuries. Anglo Saxons kept fires on the cliffs as they waited to warn of dragon boats from Norway. And behind the best bird cliffs stand spooky concrete structures from the 1950s, the top of a labyrinth of cold war bunkers now sealed off below.
Warfare also marks the beach, albeit increasingly spectrally as the metal bones of a wrecked submarine are being gradually worn away by time and tide. An enterprising local made a fortune from this hulk, rescuing its valuable engine and other parts by techniques pioneered by Bempton's celebrated "climmers".
These were farmers or fishermen who changed jobs in the nesting season, to lower themselves on ropes and "farm" the nests, for both the curio-food market and Bradford tanneries which used the yolks on patent leather. The practice was banned in 1954 on conservationist grounds, but many climmers were formidable naturalists. Henry Seebohm's History of British Birds paid tribute in 1885 to characters such as George "Owd Lowny" Londesbrough, the "Methuselah of cliff-climbers", and a Lancastrian who discovered a great rarity still known as the Bury Butcher's Egg.
There are pictures of climmers and wrecks at Richard Burton's art studio in Buckton, the next door village to Bempton, whose squire John Robinson was so delighted with his wife that he had his main roof beam engraved with: "Ann Robinson is the prettiest girl in Yorkshire." The engraver was allegedly the father of the original, since-burned, mansion's architect, the celebrated William Kent, who was born in Bridlington four miles south-east.
Brid' is the departure point for three-hour Puffin cruises in the Yorkshire Belle, which can be well-combined with a visit to the top of the cliffs. The venerable steamer hauls herself round Flamborough Head, passing exceptionally fine cliffs all the way, and then sails within puffin-spotting distance at Bempton, sea conditions permitting.
The weather can be fickle here, and on the morning of my visit the cliff tops were wreathed in the misty skeins of a sea fret, fog blown in from the sea. We could hear the Belle, far below where visibility was fine. Things had cleared by early afternoon, and although the fret shut out the glorious distant view, it added a special atmosphere to the birdlife which constantly lands and takes off from ledges close to the belvederes.
The RSPB runs a good gift shop at the end of Cliff Lane, where parking for non-members is £3.50 (admission otherwise free) and your satnav is worth photographing; it appears to show you driving straight into the sea. Katie Wheelwright's modest caravan provides delicious organic and fairtrade food, and there are plentiful country pubs nearby, as well as all manner of seaside fare, and places to stay, from genteel Filey to cheery Brid', with Scarborough and Whitby an easy and beautiful drive away.
Beach fun is best kept to Filey as the Bempton stretch is chaotically rocky, difficult to reach and dangerous without expert local knowledge because of the tides. Best enjoy it from the Belle or one of Brid's other "puffin tours".
