My rides to all five of Yorkshire’s ‘Thankful Villages’ – whose sons emerged unscathed from WWI – continued this summer day with a ride from Hull to Catwick. (See map below). The small East Yorkshire village is that rarity, ‘doubly thankful’: one of only 14 in England and Wales that also came through WWII without loss.
(Something its inhabitants would also be thankful for is if you pronounce it correctly: it rhymes with ‘attic’, not ‘Gatwick’.)
I was in Hull for various reasons, and headed towards Catwick along the Trans Pennine Trail. It takes you excitingly over Drypool Bridge, decorated in funky 1960s-style intersecting circles that look like Venn Diagrams. Because they are: they celebrate mathematician John Venn. He sits, uniquely, in the intersection of the three circle-sets of ‘mathematician’, ‘born in Hull’, and ‘inventors of cricket bowling machines’.
The TPT is a pretty scruffy broken-tarmac path through Hull’s suburbs, jagging past shabby factories, but just off it is one of Hull’s hidden gems. Garden Village was built by local magnate James Reckitt in the early 1900s to house his workforce with dignity and comfort, and the spacious villa-style houses look pretty inviting today too.
The pebbledash doesn’t always age well, and there are gaps filled in by squat modern houses where the Luftwaffe took a dislike to Edwardian residential architecture, but the wide streets named after trees enjoy green space and greenery, and it’s a pleasant area to live.
The former shopping area is all residential now, but in the old Club House is a superb local cafe and community centre. It was buzzing today, particularly with a birthday party that had quite the best cakey high-tea spread I’ve ever seen. The cakes are all home-made, and, as I can vouch from personal experience, quite delicious: I had two coffees and the almond blondie.
The TPT heads out of Hull into the blank plains of Holderness on bumpy, rooty tarmac; I was glad to be on my MTB and not, say, a unicycle.
Past where it crosses the A165 it becomes more gravelly, and after the next road crossing it’s decent gravel, and actually easier to ride.
I came off the TPT to head for Catwick past Rise Hall. In the 1980s it was a convent, and I came here for guitar lessons from a nun called Sandra. Now it’s something rather far from all that: a wedding venue.
And so past the fields of barley and rye to thankful Catwick. There’s no memorial to WWI, no cross or plaque, because they counted them all out and counted them all back. There were 48 households in 1914, sending thirty men to battle; they all returned, though one lost an arm. Thirty went again to serve in the 1939-45 conflict; again they all came home.
YORKSHIRE’S THANKFUL VILLAGES
Catwick, near Beverley
Cundall, near Ripon
Helperthorpe, near Driffield
Norton-le-Clay, near Ripon
Scruton, near Richmond
The only visible commemoration is on the two village signs on the road through the village, designed by an architect who lives in what was the old forge. There’s evidently nothing in the local church, St Michael’s, which was closed on my visit.
Catwick has no pub or shops these days, though there’s caravan and motorhome storage, and a dog hotel called Paws Inn. (Though no cat storage, it seems.) There is, however, a Londis at the petrol station on the roundabout between here and Leven, a mile up the road. Thankfully.
Before I got my train home from Beverley, I had two places to check out: Yorkshire’s Lowest Cyclable Points. A glance at the Ordnance Survey map (Landranger 107, Kingston-upon-Hull) tantalisingly suggests a few areas around Leven, a little east of Beverley, that are below sea level. Yes, a bit of the fens in Yorkshire.
Only a few are even glancingly accessible by bike though. The two most likely such areas I can find are on Carr Lane, a gravel farm lane a little southwest of Leven, at about 53.8848, -0.3261; and on the access track to a pumping station just south of the A1035 and west of the A165, at roughly 53.8752, -0.3171.
Neither gives you much of a feeling of imminent submersion, I must say – they’re both tracks across mundane farmland. The second, leading to the pumping station, is the one I’d go for as ‘the lowest cyclable point in Yorkshire without getting wet feet or sand in your shoes’.
It’s not exactly a right of way, and a barrier keeps out cars. But a local dog walking professional was using it, so I did too. Plus of course the pumping station connection is appropriate: as in the Netherlands, all this landscape is unstable, kept from re-marshing by the constant mechanical removal of water. That’s why Holland has so many windmills; no windmills here, but plenty of turbines.
(The lowest cyclable point in Yorkshire from next spring will probably be the Castle Street underpass in Hull, by the marina… when it opens. I’ll be investigating if and when it does.)
Time to go home. I headed to Beverley and found to my consternation that I had just missed my train and would have to wait nearly an hour. What to do, with only a Wetherspoons serving 5% Scarbados pale ale at the special offer price of £1.79 a pint…??
MAP
