Ravenscar seals, 1 July 2017

When our friends told us about a grey seal colony in Ravenscar, we had to have a look ourselves...

The blue line shows our track. The "P" icon shows parking, and the arrow indicates direction of travel.

This rock probably gets completely covered by water in high tide, but stretches out into the sea in low tide. One cannot make out the seals from this distance.

We came in low tide, as we planned to walk along the seashore to Robin Hood's Bay.

The is the first seal we came across. It is no longer a kid, rather a seal teenager. It must have got beached in low tide and was waiting for the sea to return.

This one was posing for photographs, sucking its paw.

Friendly banter.

The seal is enjoying the conversation.

This group of three seals was sunbathing in the rocks, right by the sea.

The main colony occupied the flat rock, ready to jump into the water. Baby seals were sunbathing with the grown-ups (the adult seals are black, like the one at the very left edge of the picture).

We got to the end of the rock. There were no seals there, just the sea gulls.

This group of seals ran for their lives when they saw us, even though we were quite far and separated by water. They were moving quite fast!

We got back to the first seals closer to the shore.

A tired seal is resting its chin on a rock.

This seal is moulting its old skin and is turning black. This was the biggest baby seal we saw.

Sonya is looking for the sea animals.

This seal has sharp teeth. It was making hissing noise to scare us away..

We then walked towards Robin Hood's Bay. A red baby rock with its parent.

The springs coming down the cliffs form waterfalls. The erosion is evident.

A crab with one claw.

Low tide exposes a terraced sea floor.

This crab excells at camouflage but we spotted it anyway.

The wind subsided in the evening and the sea calmed down.

Somebody built a few rock towers, like a miniature sculpture park.

We safely made it to Robin Hood's Bay, had some fish and chips and followed Cleveland Way back to our car.

The view from the road was amazing, with rows of sunlit chalk cliffs. The visibility was excellent, and it looked like the cliffs were lit from inside.

Despite spending 20 years in Yorkshire, this was first time we saw a seal colony in nature rather than in a seal sanctuary. Seeing them so close in nature was wonderful.

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