Walking in East Yorkshire - Spurn Point

My other half is on the countdown to a 16-mile charity walk taking place on Sunday 1st of May. Now, usually, he's not one for walking in the countryside, he finds it a little dull. But recently as 'training' he's been willing to try a few circular walks I have found for this area on the net.

A couple of weeks ago we went to Spurn Point Nature Reserve to walk the perimeter, which is an approximately 8 miles in total. What a fabulous place it is.....

Basically, it's a long, narrow, sand and shingle spit that sticks out into the mouth of the River Humber where it meets the North Sea, right in the south-east corner of East Yorkshire. You can watch the ships coming into The Humber to go to the ports and there's plenty of landmarks and wildlife to keep you interested too.

The weather was just perfect, sunny with just a slight breeze and not too many people around, surprisingly, as it was a warm sunny Sunday. And the dunes and beach are lovely golden sand gently sloping to the sea. But, this is what I am finding, nowhere is ever that busy around here. It's not like the South where you get shuffled along in the pack, or the major tourist spots where you can't take a landscape photo without 25 people being in shot. It's so refreshing. 

Anyway, back to Spurn. There's a fantastic old lighthouse perched on the sandbank. It's unmanned, but I think it's used by bird-watchers. There's quite a lot for bird-watchers to see on Spurn, by all accounts. It's a stopping off point for a lot of migrating birds, and you've got beach and sea on one side of Spurn and estuary on the other, so two habitats for the price of one. I don't confess to be a wild bird expert, but I did see a Kestrel hovering over the grass, and there were a lot of warblers around. The Spurn Bird Observatory  site is a good one for checking which birds have been spotted that day so you can find out what the ones you've seen are, if you aren't a twitcher. There were also absolutely loads of Lackey Moth caterpillars living in the gorse in their spiderweb-like tents. I know what they are because they were featured on the local news last year because there were so many of them on Spurn a lot of the bushes where completely covered in web.

But, the best wildlife I saw on Spurn (the stoat that ran across the road in front of the car when we were near the car park doesn't count) was a seal. Too far away to take a clear photo with my camera, unfortunately. According to the Yorkshire Wildlife Trust people that we saw at the dinkiest little cottage, which turns out is Spurn's birdwatching hide, seals are quite common on Spurn. They haul up near the lifeboat jetty (Spurn has it's own lifeboat crew living on the point). Anyway, I was super-pleased at that. My first seal siting. I wasn't even expecting it because I hadn't really researched what wildlife you got around Spurn, it just looked like an interesting place to do a fairly long training walk on, and take some photos.

Got some great atmospheric pictures of the old lighthouse with it's peeling paint, and the sea-worn wooden groynes along the beach.

And a lovely blue flower that was growing in amongst the grass on the dune tops that I can't find out what it is. (I must get a wildflower book.) Edit. Thanks to the very helpful people on the Wild About Britain site, this flower has been identified as a slightly chewed Greater Perriwinkle. I'm leaving the pic on because I think the chewing is so symmetrical it's interesting in itself.

I would have got more pics but I couldn't stop for long. Other half was trying to do a consistent pace for his training, so if I stopped to take a snap, he was a dot in the distance if I wasn't sharp about it. And he was carrying the food, I couldn't lose him.

It was a good day out. Even the other half liked it on Spurn. We will return.