East Yorkshire and the Thirty-Seven Mile Holderness Coast

I begin with a question.  What is the longest uninterrupted stretch of beach in the UK?   I mean the longest stretch that can be walked end to end without having to leave it at any point to get around estuaries, rivers, cliffs, ports or towns?

To be honest I don’t have the answer, I have Googled it and there is no help but I am willing to wager that it is the Holderness coast in East Yorkshire.  It stretches all the way from Bridlington harbour to Spun Head at the mouth of the Humber estuary  and it is possible to walk the entire distance without ever  leaving the sand.  Few people know this because it isn’t in Cornwall or on the South coast and celebrities don’t make TV programmes about it.  Is it just me but does anyone else get fed up with programmes about bloody Cornwall.  

It stretches for a distance of thirty-seven miles.

I am more than happy to consider alternative suggestions of course.

I couldn’t manage the full thirty-seven miles in one day but today we planned to walk a seven mile stretch from the caravan park at Brampton  Sands to Bridlington, a distance of about seven miles or so, give or take a yard or so.

We set off just after high tide.  The weather was wild but not cold, big seas, a blustery wind that tugged at our shirt buttons and the occasional threat from a rogue wave that was in apparent denial that the tide was going out and not coming in as it swept in and rearranged the pebbles with a clattering sound like the percussion section of an orchestra.

For a mile or so there was no one else sharing our beach, deserted sands, pill-box remains fallen into the sea, a splendid lonely isolation as we walked on between the rapidly eroding cliffs on one side and the wild angry sea on the other.

Along the way we came across a colony of Swifts who had build nests in the cliff face.  I say cliffs but this is soft mud not solid rock.  Anyway they were going and coming at great speed and you will have to take my word for this because they are so fast that I was quite unable to catch a single picture of just one of them.  They are the fastest land bird of all, flying at a speed of seventy miles an hour in level flight.

After leaving the nest a young bird spends up to four years in the air without coming down, they eat and sleep on the wing, they fly five hundred miles a day and most impressive of all they also mate in the air.  To put that into perspective the only way a human can get a shag while flying is to join the mile high club on a Boeing 737.

A little further on we chanced upon some Oyster Catchers busy dining among the pebbles, they let us approach but not get too close before taking to flight but thankfully they were not as quick as the Swifts.

And then there was a problem.  We came to a field drainage outfall that due to the recent heavy rains was in full flow, maybe two or three inches deep and about five yards wide.  Maybe this was a turning back point?  No, surely not!

I ventured forth and attempted to jump the fast flowing watery streams,  I made the first and the second but then got carried away and quite forgot that what I could manage forty years ago I cannot manage now and took one optimistic jump too many and landed ankle deep in ice cold water with a resulting wet boot.

Kim was a lot more sensible and took time to collect rocks to make a stepping stone path and fifteen minutes later when she was eventually satisfied with her construction efforts daintily crossed over and we carried on.  I manfully kept quiet about my wet foot and soggy sock.

After an hour or so we arrived at Bridlington South Beach, as good as any beach in England in my opinion, a fabulous stretch of golden sand, busy I guess in the Summer months but quite deserted today.  Just a few dog walkers.  I really liked it.  I didn’t like the dog walkers.

From there we passed to the harbour, I was hoping to buy some Bridlington Bay lobster.  I told you about that in a previous post.

Skipsea – A Walk Along a Bigger Beach

Skipsea beach is getting bigger.  Every winter the storms gnaw away at the soft boulder clay cliffs and take away a few more feet and inches.  It is the fastest eroding coastline in England.  The savage North Sea is like a giant excavator.

Sometimes it is possible to visit and not really notice a great deal of change but not so this year.  The Winter storms of 2023 have been especially fierce and the sea has taken away more than usual.

Today we walked along the beach from Skipsea to Barmston, a distance of about four miles.  The tide was out, the sun was shining and the wind was blowing a gale.  The sand was damp but firm and we made steady progress towards our destination.

We were last here just nine months ago but we detected huge change.

The advance of the sea is relentless.  This is an unfortunate stretch of coastline  and I say unfortunate because in the local Coastal Management Plan it  is identified as a place not worth defending against the advancing sea and one day it will be gone.  Every year six foot of land is swept away, an estimated average of two million tonnes which is moved south on the tides towards the Humber estuary and builds land there whilst it takes it away here.  It is called ‘managed retreat’.  

A holiday chalet waiting for the day of destiny…

There used to be an attempt to stop the inevitable and these are the remains of some wooden groynes that the sea just laughed at…

On a previous visit I once came across an official looking man in a hard hat and a yellow high visibility jacket who was taking photographs and making notes.  His name was Brian and I asked him about the erosion.  He explained to me that the problem is that this coastline really shouldn’t be here at all because it is made up of unconsolidated soft clay and small stones called glacial till that were scooped up from the sea bed by a glacier as it advanced south during the last ice age and dumped here as the ice eventually melted and receded north about ten thousand years ago.  

It is just soft clay with the consistency and the look of a crumbly Christmas Cake that simply cannot resist the power of the waves.  In that time an area of land twelve miles wide has been eroded away and returned to the sea bed where it came from.  Not really an ideal sort of place to build houses and construct roads.  Once, not so long ago, there was a row of houses here with long stretched gardens enjoying glorious sea views.  All gone.

Along the way we came across a fisherman tending his nets, nets stretching out to sea and full of fish, he told us that he came down every day to get his catch but it was becoming a chore because a great deal of the eroding cliffs was getting caught in the net and it took him a long time every day to clear them.  He said that he was packing them up now and moving on, aggravation from the recently arrived gypsies hadn’t helped especially as one day recently they had stolen his quad bike and left him stranded on the beach.  Luckily for him he got it back later.

Further along was a great deal of concrete debris, the remains of Second World War coastal defences called pill boxes, because they looked like pill boxes.  It is not known for sure but it is estimated that there were once twenty-eight thousand of them both around the coast and further inland as well.  There were different types and designs based on the type of invasion that might be encountered.  Bigger and stronger if there was the possibility of tanks and heavy artillery, not so strong if the threat was from parachuting invaders and hostile infantry.  As it happened none of them were needed for their intended purpose.  Today it is estimated that there are roughly six thousand of them left.

I can’t imagine that it was very pleasant being on duty in a pill box.  Cold and austere, long hours of nothing to do but scan the water, no toilet facilities and no internet for entertainment.

These ruined specimens once sat high above the cliffs, half a mile or so inland but now they have given way not to an army of soldiers but the invasion of the relentless sea.

Someone clearly has a sense of humour about the situation…

Bridlington – Lobsters and Ganseys

I have been to Bridlington several times now.  The very first time that I visited in 2015 I didn’t care for the place at all so I didn’t really give it a fair chance, didn’t stay very long and left swiftly.  I wrote a critical post about it which I have subsequently apologised for. So I have grown to rather like the town and the harbour and it has some interesting stories to tell.

If Bridlington was in Cornwall then celebrity chef Rick Stein would have an expensive seafood restaurant on the quay, every TV presenter and his dog ever would do a series about it, Doc Martin would be filmed there and people would flock there in their thousands.

Actually, thank goodness that they don’t.

Here is an interesting fact…

The north-east coast through Yorkshire and County Durham has the largest fishing industry in England in terms of employment and quantity of sea food caught, landed and processed.  At thirty-seven million tonnes in 2021 it just edged out Brixham in Devon and left Newlyn in Cornwall way behind.  The coast has four major fishing ports, Grimsby, Hull, Hartlepool and Bridlington.

Now, this might come as a surprise bit of information but Bridlington is the lobster capital of Europe, landing over three hundred  tonnes of the North Sea crustacean every year.  According to the Government’s Marine Management Organisation, lobster fetches the highest average price of all species landed by the UK fleet at over £10  per kilogram, they account for only two per cent of the weight of shellfish landings, but twelve per cent of the value. Which is why Bridlington, which lands almost no actual fish, is Yorkshire’s most lucrative fishing port.

The shellfish it lands is worth £7.2m  more than all the fish and shellfish landed at Grimsby and Whitby combined, £4m of which is accounted for by lobster.

 

In the UK we don’t eat a lot of lobster except in high end restaurants and exclusive London clubs and most of it is exported to Europe.

People in Portugal eat more fish than any other in mainland Europe, fifty-seven  kilograms per head per year which is like eating your way through an average sized cod or tuna,  Norway is second, Spain third and then France and Finland.

In the UK we like to think of ourselves as fish eaters and we voted to leave Europe on the basis of getting our fishing fleets back but we only eat cod or haddock or anything else from the same genus ( hake, colin, pollack etc.)  and on average we eat a miserly fifteen kilograms per person per year.

In mainland Europe, those who eat least fish are Albanians at only five kilograms followed by people from Serbia and North Macedonia and what is surprising is that none of these are really that far from the sea.

 The most popular fish in the UK is cod and in the USA it is prawns (shrimp), Canada and in Australia it is salmon; in France it is sea bass and in Spain hake.  The most popular Christmas Day meal in Australia is prawns (shrimp).

Throw another prawn on the Barbie there Bruce.

All of these obscure facts are worth jotting down and remembering if you are in a pub quiz team.

I will be going back to Bridlington again next month and I fully intend to find a restaurant selling Bridlington Bay Lobster.  Apparently it is important to be careful if you want the real thing because as we export almost all of our lobster to Europe then the UK market depends on imports from Canada.  What a crazy world we live in.

Today was rather windy, well, very windy actually so there weren’t many boats leaving the safety of the harbour and the boats were all safely moored up.  A walk along the harbour wall brought us to a statue of a young woman, a Gansey girl.

A Gansey is a distinctive woollen sweater, originally designed to provide protection for fishermen from wind and water.  They were traditionally made by fishermen’s wives using five ply wool (Kim tells me that is rather thick) and five needles (Kim tells me that is rather hard work).  It was (is) a tight knit made in one piece with no seams so as to keep the weather out.  

Each Gansey pattern was unique to the town or harbour where the men sailed from and in this way if there was an accident at sea and men were lost overboard then they could be identified by their Gansey.  The patterns on the garment all relate to the sea, boats, nets, pots and fish and the tradition continues today.

Next time in Bridlington I will tell you about some famous people associated with the town.

Return to Skipsea, Big Changes

The first time that I went there in 2019, I fell in love with Skipsea almost immediately.  I liked the caravan, I liked the holiday park, I liked the countryside and I liked the beach and the sea.  The exceptionally fine weather helped of course.

I returned again post covid in August 2021 and then again just nine months ago in July 2022.  As the time approached to book a cheap Spring deal again earlier this year (2023) nothing would have stopped me going there again.

 Let me explain about caravan holiday deals.

In the UK there is a very cheap and nasty daily newspaper (I use that description newspaper very loosely) called T’he Sun’ and several years ago they launched a voucher scheme that once collected allowed readers to book cheap caravan holidays in the UK. 

The Sun newspaper is a curious conundrum, it supports the right wing Tory government and its extreme political views which cares nothing for the middle and working class and the middle and working class read the Sun and vote Tory.  It is absolutely unbelievable.

I would never buy the Sun toilet tissue so I never got to benefit from the offer but a few years ago the voucher codes began to be published on-line so it was possible to get the offer without buying the rag.

So, I booked a caravan in my favourite resort of Skipsea for four nights for just £60, everything included.  An absolute bargain.

On arrival, too early to book in, we took a walk to the seafront and were in for a nasty shock.  Only nine months ago there were cliff top chalets which although being in danger of falling into the sea had a sort of seaside charm with friendly owners and there were steps down to the beach.  All had changed. 

A severe winter and a succession of storms had eroded the cliffs to danger levels, the local Council had negotiated a property exchange and compensation and  after the no doubt relieved owners had moved out the gypsies had moved in and now there were caravans, ponies, big dogs, piles of rubbish, bonfires and the acrid smell of burning tyres.  I felt immediately uneasy.

Where had they come from I wondered? Where had they come from I worried?

The village of Skipsea and the adjacent caravan site  Skipsea Sands sits precariously on Yorkshire’s East Riding coast which is said to be the fastest eroding coastline in Europe. Since the Doomsday Book was completed in 1086 twenty-six villages along this stretch of coast have been lost to the sea. Cutting new steps to the beach is an annual job.

The advance of the sea is relentless.  Every year along the Holderness coast nearly two metres of coastline is swept away, an estimated average of two million tonnes which is moved south on the tides towards the Humber estuary and builds new unwanted land there whilst it takes it away here where they would very much like to keep it.

Sea defences are just not financially viable (after all, it isn’t in the south of England), the area is officially designated as a zone of ‘no active intervention’ and it is inevitable that another twenty houses and a fish and chip shop will soon be lost to the waves.  The Local Council is like King Canute and cannot control the sea.

These are houses that were built as recently as 1985 and at that time had long gardens and a road running  along the front but that all seems rather foolish now. There were once houses on the other side of the road too but they had already gone which should perhaps have acted as a warning to the people who bought these properties as holiday homes.  An especially violent storm in the winter of 2008 took the road away and the waves have gnawed away at the soft clay cliffs every year since.

The gypsy community is clearly prepared to take the risk, if the houses and all their rubbish fall into the sea they don’t really care, they will just move on.  The Environment Agency should deal with it but I doubt the balls to do so.  Gypsies can be tough people to deal with.

This was all rather disappointing, they had even blocked off access to the very fine beach.  I try not to be judgemental but I don’t trust gypsies, I had several incidents with them in my working life, they live by a different set of social rules from normal folk.

Anyway, we weren’t going to let this setback spoil our holiday.  Tonight we were staying in a caravan just five hundred yards away so I took the precaution of putting my wallet and car keys under the mattress before I went to sleep that night.

Gypsies are not known for their hospitality…

East Yorkshire – Skipsea Walks

I like going on holiday in England but as I get older and fuel gets more expensive I find driving tedious and frustrating.  East Yorkshire has everything I need, the roads aren’t busy and it is only fifty miles away.

I have written about it before so just pictures this time.

Click on an image to scroll through the Gallery…

East Yorkshire – Holderness and Spurn Point

18th July 2022 was predicted to be the hottest day ever, EVER, in the UK and we were setting off for a four night caravan break in East Yorkshire.  I generally associate caravans with rain and cold, not unbearable heat waves.  Luckily we have an electric fan so we packed that first.

We were heading to the Holderness Coast which stretches from Flamborough Head near Bridlington in the north to Spurn Head in the extreme south east of the County.  

As we listened to the radio it seemed as though the whole country was in heat panic, trains cancelled, airports shut, schools closed, people advised not to travel, drawer the curtains and retreat Gollum like into the shelter of a basement.    The sort of heat that melts steel, fries people’s brains and turns pigs into  bacon crisps.  It all seemed like a massive and ridiculous overreaction to me.  There have been hot spells before and everyone knows that in the UK these temperature blips are only ever temporary and rarely last more than a day or two.  For some reason the Government declared a National Emergency.

And what are people complaining about?  Many Brits spend a fortune every year to go to Southern Europe for exactly the sort of temperatures that they were moaning about today, We shouldn’t have to go to work in temperatures like this they complained in TV news interviews but they would be a bit miffed if Spanish waiters said the same.

We left early to stay ahead of the predicted ‘danger’ temperatures and the risk of melting road surfaces and crossed the Humber Bridge, negotiated the traffic queues through the city of Hull and eventually found ourselves in the south Yorkshire countryside, quite unlike anything in the North or the West.

Holderness is an area of the East Riding of Yorkshire, an area of rich agricultural land that was once marshland until it was drained for agriculture in the Middle Ages and as we journeyed East we  drove through miles and miles of wheat and barley fields all shining proudly gold and standing erect in the unexpected July sunshine.

Arriving at Yorkshire Wildlife Spurn Head visitor centre we paid the £5 parking fee and set off on the three mile walk to Yorkshire’s Land’s End.  I immediately wished I hadn’t been so foolish to pay the fee because there was free parking all along the side of the road.  It used to be possible to drive all the way to the end but a mighty Winter storm in 2013 washed away the road and created an island which is now cut off by high tides.

At the point that the road ended we found ourselves walking on a beach flanked by sand dunes and periodic derelict buildings also victims of the storm.  Out in the North Sea just a few miles away we could see the seventy-three off-shore wind turbines of the Humber Gateway Windfarm gleaming in the sunshine  like an army of Viking invaders in shining armour waiting to come ashore.

If temperatures were approaching 40 degrees inland that wasn’t the case here on the sand spit and a pleasant sea breeze kept things down around a very manageable 30 or so.  At the end of the walk we came to the Spurn lighthouse, redundant now for several years, the remains of the demolished lighthouse keepers cottage, a military parade ground and what was once an army gun emplacement protecting the entrance to the Humber Estuary. 

A short way out to sea is  a sea fort, one of two built during the First World War, one here and one on the South side near Cleethorpes near Grimsby.  Construction began in 1914 but they were not completed until 1919 after the war had ended,  Luckily the Germans didn’t attempt to invade via the Humber.  In the Second World War a chain net was strung between the two to  prevent enemy submarines entering the estuary.  A distance of about five miles.  

I found it a rather wild and eerie sort of place, voices of the old sea, abandoned history in every grain of sand and ghostly whispers in the breeze.    We were now at the most easterly point of Yorkshire and we stared out into the vast expanse of the North Sea and Scandinavia beyond.

Not the most easterly place in the UK because that is Lowestoft in East Anglia,

There is nothing to stay for once we had reached the end so we turned around and set off on the three mile trek back to the visitor centre and hoped that the tide hadn’t come in and cut us off from the mainland.

Geography Quiz

1  What is the most northerly capital city in the World?

2  What is the most southerly capital city in the World?

3  Which country is regarded as the centre of the Earth?

4  What is the Highest capital city in the World?

5  What is the Lowest capital city in the World?

6  Which country is closest to the South Pole?

7  Which country is closest to the Moon?

8  Which is the most easterly US state?

Click on an image to scroll through the gallery…

 

 

A to Z of Cathedrals – Y is for Beverley Minster in Yorkshire

OK, not technically a Cathedral but still, in my opinion, grand enough to be included.

Minster is an honorific title given to particular churches in England most usually those that have been associated with monastic life sometime in the past.

Church hierarchy is a complicated matter because a Minster falls somewhere between Church and Cathedral but can confusingly stray either way.  Beverley Mister is a Church but thirty miles away York Minster is a Cathedral.  Beverley has a Bishop but he is based in York.  In London, Westminster is a Cathedral and an Abbey and a Minster and down the road there is a Roman Catholic Cathedral of the same name.

Read the full story Here…

This, by the way, is York Minster (Cathedral) obscured a bit behind the statue of Roman Emperor Constantine…

 

On This Day – The Disappearing Coast of Yorkshire

While the current travel restrictions are in place I have no new stories to post so what I thought that I would do is to go through my picture archives and see where I was on this day at any time in the last few travelling years.

On 26th July 2019 I was in Skipsea in Yorkshire just a few miles north of where I live…

Click on an image to scroll through the Gallery…

The advance of the sea is relentless.

Every year along the Holderness coast nearly two metres of coastline is swept away, an estimated average of two million tonnes which is moved south on the tides towards the Humber estuary and builds land there where they don’t want it whilst it takes it away from here where they do.

Read The Full Story Here…

Beverley Minster – The Musicians

The minster is famous for its carvings of medieval musical instruments. There are over 70 such carvings, illustrating instruments that are familiar to modern viewers, but also a variety of unusual medieval instruments. Among the carvings are depictions of bagpipes, flutes, pipes, organs, tambourines, shawms, cymbals, trumpets, lutes, and more.

Click on an image to scroll through the Gallery…

 

Yorkshire – Beverley, Two Churches and a Market

On the final morning at Skipsea Sands Holiday Park we woke to overcast skies and rain, it seemed that we had the best of the weather, this is the problem with an English Summer, it can be all over in just a week.  The golden corn field was now a dirty brown.  No breakfast on the balcony this morning so we packed our bags and left.

We arrived in Beverley in the late morning and by the time we had interpreted the complicated car park payment process at a pay and display machine the sky was blue, the sun was shining and a day that started needing a raincoat now only required shirt-sleeves.

The name of the town came into use sometime in the tenth century and I always find it interesting how far the name of an English town or city has travelled world-wide.  In the United States the U.S. Board on Geographic names have for some reason dropped the third ‘e’ but there is a Beverly in Chicago, Kansas, Kentucky, Massachusetts, New Jersey, Ohio, South Dakota, Washington and West Virginia.  Beverly Hills in California is named after the English town so can indirectly be included in the list.

In Canada, as in USA the drop the third ‘e’ in Beverly, Toronto but in Australia they retain the correct spelling in Beverley, Adelaide and in a small town in Western Australia.

The place was busy and we followed a stream of pedestrians who seemed to know where they were going and arrived quite quickly at the Market Place.  Ordinarily I would not find this an especially thrilling experience, even now after nearly sixty years I can recall being dragged around Leicester Market by my mother on a weekly basis, but Beverley Market, I have to say, was quite wonderful, busy, vibrant and full of life and I was so overcome by the moment I was talked into a rash purchase of a rusty garden ornament for £25 – my entire pocket money for the week.

I knew it was going to take me a while to get over that moment of shopping weakness so I steered us all away from the market and towards the ‘Georgian Quarter’ which I hoped would give me the time that I needed to recover my composure.

The ‘Georgian Quarter’ is not a huge area, the main road ‘North Bar Within’ is barely two hundred yards long but it has been well preserved and is flanked with elegant town houses with handsome front doors with gleaming brass furniture.

It is rare that one small town boasts two wonderful historic churches, but that is the case for the East Yorkshire town of Beverley. The most famous of the two is without doubt the Minster, a wonderful monastic church but at the other end of town, just inside the last surviving five hundred year old town gate, stands the glorious medieval church of St Mary.

Sir Tatton Sykes, a prolific nineteenth century church restorer, once famously remarked that the west front of St Mary’s was ‘unequalled in England and almost without rival on the continent of Europe’. Now, Sir Tatton may be forgiven for seeing the church with the rose-tinted spectacles of a local enthusiast but the truth is that St Mary’s is a beautiful church, and must surely warrant inclusion in any list of the great parish churches of England.

We had come to see the Minster of course but finding ourselves outside the church it seemed rude not to pay a visit and we were soon very glad that we did.  It is an eye-catching structure from outside and the doorway is framed with stone carvings of gargoyles with wild, scary faces and bulging eyes but once past the ugly bug invitation committee we passed into an elaborate and sumptuous interior which is in contrast to the normal austerity of Anglican churches.

Inside the church is a treasure chest of stained glass windows, two magnificent ceiling paintings, one of the constellation of stars and another of Anglo-Saxon Kings of England and a trail of stone carvings that requires a printed map to try and find them all.  Most famous of all is perhaps the carving of the March Hare, a rabbit dressed as a Pilgrim and said to have inspired Lewis Carol’s Alice in Wonderland although I can find no real evidence to support that particular claim.

After lunch in smart little town centre café we made our way now along busy streets with buskers and street entertainers until we reached the Minster.  A magnificent Gothic structure which towers over the whole of the town.

Minster is an honorific title given to particular churches in England most usually those that have been associated with monastic life sometime in the past.  Church hierarchy is a complicated matter because a Minster falls between Church and Cathedral but can confusingly stray either way.  Beverley Mister is a Church but thirty miles away York Minster is a Cathedral.  Beverley has a Bishop but he is based in York.  In London, Westminster is a Cathedral and an Abbey and a Minster and down the road there is a Roman Catholic Cathedral of the same name.

It is an impressive building for sure and inside there are soaring columns, high vaulted windows, chapels and tombs but decoration is sparse and compared to St Mary’s Church it seemed strangely austere and functional.  We stayed for a while until we were spotted taking photographs without a permit (£3) from which we were excused when I pointed out that my granddaughter had spent an inflated £15 in the gift shop and then we left.

By now it was late afternoon so we returned to the market to collect our garden ornament purchases and then we left Beverley and made our way back to the Humber Bridge and back to Grimsby.  It had been an excellent few days in East Yorkshire.

Click on an image to scroll through the Gallery…