As everyone who's ever visited knows, Bempton Cliffs is a popular place - and to prove it (as if we needed to) we've just been named joint winners of the Visitor Attraction category in the Remarkable East Yorkshire Tourism Awards 2016.
But we're not just loved locally. Every year Bempton Cliffs meets and greets visitors from all corners of the world. Italy, Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands and Australia all feature regularly in our Welcome Desk notes of where folk come from - even Kazakstan made the list last year. Last year also saw 70 year old Guoxian from Yunnan, China (seen below with her daughter and son-in-law) pay us a visit. Gazing out from out viewpoints at the North Sea was only the second time in her life that she'd seen the ocean.
This season, volunteer Chris Leak, is going to be finding out more about our guests from other countries. With a background in journalism, Chris has taken on the role of the reserve's roving reporter with a brief to talk to as many of our international visitors as he can to discover just what it is about our amazing cliffs that enticed them to make the journey here.
The first people he met on his travels across the reserve were a couple from Finland. Over to Chris:
'Vilho and Candy Kallio had been told by friends about our amazing location and seabirds and they came hoping to capture some great images on camera. They travelled up from their holiday base in Goxhill in Lincolnshire, a mere 46 miles compared to the 1018 miles or so from Hull to Finland.
Travel to Flamborough and East Yorkshire is not too difficult with Hull having ferry services across the North Sea and then on to the Continent and of course there is the rapidly expanding Humberside airport plus others reasonably close by.
Compare Finland with England and according to the latest figures available Finland has something like 5.5m people, most of them living fairly close to the capital Helsinki and most people live on the coastal strip. Just think that London alone has a population round about the same total.
The Finns also have more than one language – Finnish and Swedish being the two official languages. And just when you've got your head round that there are 4000 Sami people (they used be called Lapps) living in Finland who speak three versions of their Sami language.
So if you fancy impressing your friends with some Finnish names for birds seen on our patch, try these for size. The kittiwake is known as pikkiulokki, the common tern as kalatiira and that stealthy stalker, the barn owl, sounds a bit more exotic as a turnipollo. The humble tree sparrow is known to the Finns as pikkuvorrpunen while the northern gannet, an icon of Bempton, turns up with the name of pohjoisen suula.'
But back to the Kallios. They had their walk on a bitterly cold day and came back to the centre for a warm drink and Candy bought a woolly hat as a souvenir of the couple's visit.'
Chris will be catching up with more international visitors soon.