The crumbling coast between Bridlington and Kilnsea is the fastest-disappearing in Europe. Riding it is a sobering experience. Roads and lanes end abruptly on a literal cliff-edge, blocked off by concrete slabs that get moved regularly, wearily, back with every new collapse. Caravan pitches, farmland and houses tumble into the sea after every storm. It’s a dispiriting reminder of civilisation’s fragility.
It was misty and damp for my early morning start from Bridlington. At the end of the promenade I carried on south down the beach: flat, firm sand still damp from the falling tide.
At Fraisthorpe a lane connected me back with the road network, and I rode to two of the most dramatic examples of vanishing infrastructure.
Two eastbound roads end, savagely, at the neighbouring villages of Ulrome and Skipsea. The strip of clifftop tarmac in between that recently connected them has all but gone, gouged out by sea swells.
I came here last in 2016, and there have been more losses since then.
I managed to walk – carefully – along the grassy field-edge path between Ulrome and Skipsea, and cycled on to Hornsea, celebrating my safe arrival with a bacon butty and coffee from one of the many promenade cafes.
I’ve been here a few times, either to visit the Mere (Yorkshire’s largest freshwater lake) or when finishing the Trans Pennine Trail (whose final few miles from Hull go along a just-about-OK railtrail).
But it’s spoiled by the promenade’s cycling ban; Withernsea (where you can cycle half of their prom) or Bridlington (where you can ride the entire thing, three or four miles) are much more bike-friendly.
The Holderness coast here consists essentially of caravan parks and farmland. A few villages, little more than the odd house and church, teeter on the edge of the abyss. Many have gone, claimed by the waves. Great Cowden, south of Hornsea, was a thriving village on Victorian maps, but fell in the 1930s. Its former location is now hundreds of metres out to sea.
A bit further down, you used to be able to cycle between Hilston and Tunstall on a loop that was part of the National Byway. Not that long ago, either – you might have been listening to Radiohead as you did so – but the loss of the clifftop section means the loop connects no longer.
And East Yorkshire keeps on disappearing. Today, Google Maps was still showing an intact clifftop road, Seaside Lane, north of Tunstall. Well, it ain’t there no more. It’s in the sea now.
I remember cycling to Tunstall in the 1980s, when its historic phonebooth/ postbox hybrid – a rare surviving K4 from 1927 – was half a mile east of here, on a road long since gone. They’ve moved the K4 well inland, into a caravan park; I stopped to have a quick look, though I’ve been here recently again.
Then it was Withernsea, a once-bustling resort that like Hornsea was hit hard when Beeching axed the railways in the 1960s. It’s famous for its lighthouse bizarrely sited on an inland, town-centre residential street; the building is a museum to the town’s world-famous daughter, the film star Kay Kendall – yes, I had to look her up – but it was closed today, so I couldn’t get the views from the top.
Withernsea is also know for the grand, castle-gate-like entrance to its pier, especially as there isn’t actually a pier any longer. A storm did for it well over a century ago and they never quite got round to replacing it.
I rode down Withernsea’s southern promenade and followed quiet, quiet lanes across the flattening Holderness plains.
There’s not much here in these empty lands. A few tiny villages, a plastic cow, a giant set of gas terminals fenced starkly off like a high-security jail.
And so to Kilnsea, the remote gateway village to the long sand spit of Spurn Head, which I’ll complete tomorrow morning. Kilnsea was moved half a mile a century ago to dodge erosion, and now boasts a lively pub (the Crown and Anchor), a few houses, some breezy big-sky views of the Humber Estuary and North Sea, and – delightfully for me – a lovely little bunkhouse, the Spurn Bird Observatory.
Several bird rangers are in residence here, living for a few weeks or months in caravans or lodgings, and spend their time in the amiable business of logging bird sightings, ringing, and conserving. The evening I was there they had a Birds Quiz and takeaway night in the bunkhouse common room, and it was all very sociable and jolly. Especially when the cry went up to me ‘They’ve got a shortie! Do you want see the shortie?’
Of course I said yes, even though I wasn’t really sure what a shortie was. It proved to be a short-eared owl, caught for ringing and measuring before its gentle and harmless re-release back into the evening. I felt like a Countryfile presenter, there with the half-dozen ringers in a distant shed in their excitement.
A lovely end to a thought-provoking day. I didn’t need to come in on the group takeaway: I’d stocked up at Withernsea Aldi on sushi, curry, peaches and custard, and Aussie Shiraz. I think that’s a fusion menu.
Miles today: 53
Miles from Redcar: 146