Yorkshire: Kilnsea to Fort Paull 19/6/2008****

 

Sunk Island Church   Stone Creek   Hairy buttercup

Today we followed, as well as we could, the north bank of the Humber to the outskirts of Hull.  The first part stretched from Kilnsea along the embankment to south of Welwick comfortably enough along a well-maintained public footpath.  We saw a few minor dune plants, hairy buttercup, saltmarsh flowers like sea milkwort and sea rocket, and a single plant of Turkish iris.  The dominant bright flowers along the embankment, however, were tufted vetch and meadow vetchling, which relieved a succession of common coarse plants. Fortunately, at the end, there were newly installed stiles allowing access to the fields near Outstray Farm and the paths here were flowery (spring beauty, poppy, parsley-piert, knotted and rough clovers).  There were many brown hares and grey partridge in the crops of wheat.  Long-eared owls patrolled here.  The paths led to a bridge over the Patrington Channel beside the farm, saving a long detour through Patrington itself, far inland.  There was no public access to the embankment again on this side, and we suspected it would not be well-maintained, so we carried on along the quiet straight back lanes to Channel farm, where we saw a red kite overhead being mobbed by crows. There followed a long footpath through wheat and rape fields, dominated in the first half by 6” high stiff stubble recently cut that was uncomfortable to negotiate.  Emerging in the road by Wood Farm we then followed lanes westward to the crossroads called Sunk Island, where we ate lunch sitting in the churchyard.  This used to be a real island, but Dutch immigrants, to create the fertile fields of crops now dominating this area, reclaimed the land around it.  From here it was a relatively smaller distance to the coast again at Stone Creek, a large muddy inlet with a few houses and boats. The footpath along the embankment started again here, but was totally unmaintained with very tall grass and thistles impossible to get through.  Reluctantly we returned to the road to the northwest that gradually diverged from the coast again.  We were annoyed that they had bothered to trim the verges here, where few walked, but had not done so along the footpath.  We attempted to take a track through a farm to another road on the other side, but we were stopped by a worker in a tractor and were forced to take a side-path back to the embankment, where the path was still full of long grass and thistles.  The strong off-river wind blew the long plants across the narrow track and made it exhausting work to travel over a mile in these conditions.  This only ended at the lagoons of Paull Holme Sands (where there were shelduck), and a birders’ hide ensured that the tracks had been more frequently used and were more walkable, becoming gradually more so and even laid with stones or concrete as we neared the tourist attraction of Fort Paull.  A woodcock flew up beside us.  We walked the estuary edge once more after the lagoons underneath the fort to the car park, where we could at last sit down and phone our B&B for the promised lift back in their car.  As we waited here we saw a seal briefly put its head above water.  The day had been mostly sunny and quite dry, but the cold wind off the water was unrelenting.  We were completely exhausted at the end, having walked 18 miles, sometimes in trying conditions.  Once again we cursed, as so often in past sections of the coast walk, the failure of councils to maintain their footpaths.