Wolds Way Day 1

Hessle to South Cave

Hessle Haven used to be a busy boat-building area.  Jill’s old guidebook to the Wolds Way describes the noise of the hammers and the rivets ringing across the small inlet from the Humber.  These days it is rather seedy.  The Ferryboat Inn, which marks the start of the walk, is an abandoned Italian restaurant, though it still bears a moulded, if painted over, sign above the door.  It’s hardly a glamorous launchpad for the forthcoming journey.

A cool breeze was blowing and taking the edge off the temperature until we – Jill, my driver and sometime companion for the week, and I – walked along the leafy edge of the river towards the Humber Bridge.  The water was flat and muddy with light playing on its surface as clouds scudded by overhead.  The estuary was made of patterns in different shades of brown.  Above all this rose the magnificence of the bridge itself.  It might look a bit stumpy and have a somewhat dated brutalist style about it, but the scale of it is still impressive, soaring over the water to distance Lincolnshire.  Below, at the car park, is a carved stone which makes a rather more decorous kicking off point for the walk.  We took pictures and said our goodbyes until South Cave.

Pavements took me under the bridge as far as the old Hessle Whitings (i.e. chalk) mill, now the entrance to the country park, after which the Trans-Pennine Trail whizzed me along the foreshore towards North Ferriby.  The turgid river was my beige companion on this stretch.  Unused to walking by water, I found myself looking at the wildflowers and shrubs around me, trying to guess what they were, rather than looking at the riverine scenery.  Lincolnshire skulked on the far side when I looked, showing factories or mines or other unlovely sights.

At North Ferriby I had a choice between low tide or high tide routes.  It was bang on high tide but I chose the low tide route.  This was a mistake.  After a very short section on the water’s margin, the tide was too high up and the onward route meant clambering across the boulders that made up the sea defence.  Not being one to go back, I carried on anyway, turning the walk into something like the top of a Lakeland or Scottish fell.  At one point I found myself tippy-toey along the boulders past a car park full of people sitting in their cars, staring out at the estuary and waiting for me to fall on my face.  I didn’t, thankfully.  The small bonus of taking this option was that I had a lovely walk through the woods at the far end, with dappled sunlight lighting up the forest floor.

Out of the woods, I took a wrong turn in attempting to cross the A63.  The guidebook said turn left, so I did.  When I found myself in a tunnel decorated with children’s murals of the bridge, I decided I had probably gone wrong and turned back.  What the guidebook should have said is turn right, then left (the road you want to cross is higher up than the footpath you’re on, so you have to go right to get up onto it).  The road was busy and noisy and, on the far side, it was good to hurry away into the peace of some more woodland.

I had a stop for lunch in the pretty village of Welton, sitting by the mill stream in front of the church.  The ducks paddled over to see if I was going to share any of my sandwiches.  They were out of luck.  After lunch, when I stood up, I found that the pain I had felt earlier in my left foot was worse.  With my boot off I discovered that my sock was twisted round and had been rubbing against the sole of my foot.  I righted the sock and hoped for the best.  It still didn’t feel good.

The path climbed higher and the landscape opened out into fields of crops.  Wildflowers crowded the edges of the paths, mostly cow parsley, campions and buttercups but also speedwells, forget-me-nots and many others I couldn’t name.  The fields were a stony mix of chalk and sand, and were sown with wheat and barley, still unripe.  Oilseed rape was already in bloom, colouring the hillsides, and bright red poppies dotted the edges of the yellow.

Near Wauldby a bloke and his dog caught up with me as I photographed poppies.  He asked the way to Nut Wood – he was wandering randomly without a map after visiting his mother in Hull – and, as it was in my direction for a little while, asked if it was ok to walk with me.  Naturally I didn’t decline although he set off at rather a faster pace than I would have gone on my own.  Every now and then he would call the dog to heel and I wasn’t quite sure if it was called Mungo or Mongo.  The latter I hope, though the possibility of the former had me singing, ‘In the Summertime’.

At Brantingham church I saw another person – I didn’t see many – and waved from a distance.  The final stretch was in sight and I was feeling quite good, bar the slight pain in my left foot.  It felt very hot dropping into South Cave and I was looking forward to my pint in the Fox and Coney.  The room there was decent – good size, clean, facilities in working order – and I was glad of a shower before coming down for dinner.  Jill’s friend Judy, who lives nearby, joined us for an excellent meal, washed down with some excellent beer (Crystal Jade, brewed for the pub and only £3 a pint).  We popped over the road for one at the Bear Inn but it wasn’t quite as salubrious a place and quickly returned.

At some point in the night, I think it was 4am, I woke from my sleep to close the bedroom window to shut out the sound of the chiming of the clock tower a few metres away from my room.  The tower was lit up pink by the rising sun and a half-moon hung palely in the blue sky.