CRIMDON DENE

Went on holiday to Crimdon Dene Holiday Park last week it's up in the north east of England between Hartlepool and the old colliery villages of Blackhall, Hordon, Peterlee and Easington.

our caravan site where Tina, Mike, Maria, Luke, Aneurin and myself spent a week in geordie land.

The pits have gone now and the whole area has been landscaped, the beaches although not perfect are starting to clean themselves up. You can still find sea coal on the beaches and the rocks and pebbles on them are the old colliery waste that was dumped out to sea and has washed back in on the tide.

the beaches of the colliery villages are now starting to clean themselves up

this mine shaft is a monument to easington colliery

This is the site where Easington colliery once stood you can see how it's been landscaped and is now a beautiful area full of wonderful walks and wildlife.

easington colliery site

Tina's Mam was born and bred up at Hordon and moved to South Wales as a young woman of 24, so this trip was a chance for her to catch up with her family and have a look around her old stomping ground "wye aye man". 

The Pit villages have had big movies such as "Get Carter" and "Billy Elliot" filmed in them and off  Hartlepool headland the first civilian was killed in the second world war from German ships bombing the coast. Another interesting fact is that Matt Baker once of Blue Peter and now presenter of the One Show and Countryfile was born in Easington. He did a film for Countryfile about a local beauty spot called Castle Eden Dene which goes from Blackhall to Castle Eden.

Hartlepool headland, there was a fairground on it the week we were there.

Now I was expecting a nice week by the seaside doing the family thing but I took my camera and binoculars just in case the odd nice bird showed up to watch or photograph, so I couldn't believe my luck when I found out there was a Little Tern colony on the beach, the bad news was that a couple of months before some criminals had been there and stole most of the eggs but there were still about six individual birds still around. Little Terns will nest on quite popular beaches and although the nesting area was fenced off the thieves still got at them. There's a warden on site but he's only part time and they rely on volunteers to keep them safe so you can see how they got in and the Tern's plight lets hope they return next year after wintering in Africa and have a successful breeding season.

this is the area where the Little Terns breed you can see the area that has been fenced off for them

one of the many signs trying to explain to people about the Terns

and another

These are some of the images I managed of the birds themselves.



Little Tern

Little Tern

Little Tern

Although there were no nests there they would still swoop down to attack you, I felt the wind around my head as they got pretty close.

Sterna albifrons

I think this is enough for now I'll blog about the rest of the holiday shortly