Friday 8 May 2009

Day out at Spurn Point

I have been thinking about visiting Spurn Point in East Yorkshire for ages, it looks so amazing the way this narrow strip of land jutts out into the North Sea. I've been reading up about it, apparently the peninsula is breached every 250 years, the sea cuts across it permanently and all beyond the breach is swept away and will reform again over the years, repositioning itself slightly to the west and pointing further south. Here is a link to an arial photograph.

Spurn Point is 3.5 miles long and 50 yards wide in places, it has been owned by the Yorkshire Wildlife Trust since 1960, and the sea defences built by the Victorians are now crumbling. There is a life boat station which is the only one in the country with full time paid staff. There are seven men and their families who live in RNLI houses, 29 people in total, they work seven days a week and must be on call so can't go anywhere. The wives have to do all the running around, shopping, getting the car fixed, etc, and the children get the school bus every morning. The jetty also has the Humber pilots working from it, these boats guide the big ships in and out of the narrow and treacherous shipping lanes of the Humber. This is my photograph of the jetty. It's a nice day today so I set off at 10am, over the Humber Bridge, and through Hull. When I get my bus pass I'm going to have some days out here then I won't have to pay the bridge toll, it's £2.70 at the moment. I kept on going through a lot of villages, on the A1073 then the B1445. You can park for free before you go onto the peninsula, and walk the three and a half miles to the point, I decided to drive almost to the end, and pay the £3 parking, because I wanted make sure I had enough energy to do some exploring as well as some beach combing.

It was very windy as I walked towards the point, the tide was out so I went down onto the beach, it was like being in a sand storm, thank goodness my back was towards the wind or I would never have been able to open my eyes. I walked along the North Sea side of it for a while then went up onto the sand dunes. There was squillions of brown caterpillars everywhere. These are from the brown tail moth, a notice said not to touch them because their small barbed hairs may cause irritation, often developing into a rash. I decided to sit down in a sheltered spot to eat my lunch but wasn't there very long, I jumped up when I noticed some furry little bodies climbing over my boots and scurrying up my trouser legs, thankfully on the outside.
The caterpillars were everywhere, in the grasses, blowing across the beach, getting squashed on the road.
Another reason I wanted to visit Spurn is that we have an exhibition at the Arts Centre in Scunthorpe at the moment, of thousands of pieces of plastic picked up from the beaches, by artist Martin Waters. If you look at his web site there are pictures of it on the Installations page, the six big coloured panels, they are pretty impressive.

On the way home I went a slightly different route, to drive past the wind farm at Holmpton, the seven turbines were spinning in the wind. I stopped off at Withernsea and had a lovely fish and chip tea. This is a small seaside town with a few amusement arcades, I took a walk down the promenade before I left to come home. I really enjoyed my day out.

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