Having had a successful cycle ride along the Humber estuary the other day, I was dead keen to go out and so some more. Friday was just a beautiful day, and so I persuaded ‘im indoors to skive off for the afternoon, stick the bikes on the car rack, and head out to Spurn Point.
Spurn is a little spit of land, about three miles long, and as narrow as 50 yards in places, with a single track road along it. It’s the only place in the UK that has a manned lifeboat station, as it can be just too difficult to get a crew there in bad weather; the sea comes over the spit. It’s a glorious place – we’d only been once, and that in a biting December wind, so I was keen to see it in more clement weather.
We left the car at the beginning of the Point, and set off. Like most of the area, it’s pretty flat, but for the first mile or so (and thus the last too), the road has vanished as the banks shift, and so it’s been re-laid on sleepers. They are horrible to cycle on, bumpity bumpity bump (new teef, please), and also that section is covered in fine sand, which can put a fair brake on your progress, but once past there it’s concrete and an easy ride.
It’s quite clear that the idea of steam giving way to sail, as it were, hasn’t penetrated to the Spurn visitors yet. The cars tend to force you off the road, and see passing places as just places to pass other cars, rather than bicycles, so you have to keep your wits about you (providing you remembered to bring them, of course).
Pete had to turn back, as he realised he had left the car keys in the car (fewl!), so I pressed on, and took a load of photographs at the end, which you can see here, should you wish. He arrived in due course, we had a mooch about, and then cycled back – about 6.5 miles, and it was dead easy; my fitness has improved beyond belief. Next up we’re going to Beverley and back, which will be about 11 miles, I think.
We had a tour round Holderness in the car afterwards, which really is the flatlands, with lots of no through roads that aren’t labelled as such; then you reach a farm gate and realise you have to turn back. We came home via Paull, another place I’d wanted to see. There’s a Grade II listed lighthouse for sale there, and if you’d asked me a year ago would I like it, I’d have bitten your hand off. But now I’m in love with urban living, and so someone else can have it. We had a quick pub supper in the Humber Tavern in Paull (has everyone got a Facebook these days?!) – Whitby scampi and a G&T for me, and salmon fish cakes accompanied by a pint of Tetleys for Pete.
A very fine afternoon out, that was, and all the better for being impulsive – we shall do it again.