DAY6
Kings Lynn to Kingston Upon Hull Miles 160
Today nothing happened, or at least very little. After a very interesting tour of Kings Lynn,
Jim’s now home town, we crossed into Lincolnshire and nothing happened!
Jim took me to the old town of Kings Lynn, which is absolutely
lovely, especially by the Minster.
Unfortunately we did not have time to go in. If we had done I am sure that we would have
been there two hours at least as I do love exploring English churches and
Cathedrals. So much history. By the way I do hope that they have noticed
that the right hand side appears to be leaning.
Perhaps just as well we did not go in!
The Minster, Kings Lynn
Taking the attached photo proved slightly challenging as for
what reason I do not know, other than he might have wanted to be in a photo, a
man drove his car right in front of the Minster and began to polish it! Perhaps he was a chauffer you might think,
but probably not as he was in shorts and smoking heavily. He rubbed it all over and then drove off.
Bizarre.
We then went to see the statute of Captain Vancouver who was
born in this city. There is an
interesting statue of him on the Quay, however it is not as big as I would have
expected for the founder of such a great city (indeed two cities) that are
named after him. I think that Vancouver
City Council should pay for a much bigger monument to him as a token of
friendship with Kings Lynn. It certainly
would be cheaper and less self-indulgent than bike lanes!
Capt. Vancouver
We then crossed over the River Ouse and into Lincolnshire, by
the unfortunately named village of Clenchwarton. Lincolnshire is the produce garden of England
and according to Jim produces one third of all the vegetables eaten in the
UK. Indeed Lincolnshire is especially
known for growing potatoes. This
therefore means that there must be lots of fields – there are. Fields are either ploughed waiting for the
potatoes to sprout, or, covered with hundreds of miles of white plastic mesh to
keep the birds off. It also means that Lincolnshire
is full of agricultural machinery, which when they travel on the roads results
in slow, slow traffic. They are expected
to pull over after one mile to let traffic that has built up, go past. This they do.
However, they have created such a gap in the traffic that as the first
cars get past the first tractor a second tractor is waiting up the road, which
of course is clear enough for him to pull out.
The cars released from the first tractor then catch up with and build up
behind the second tractor and then behind the third, fourth and fifth and so
on, right across Lincolnshire! We were
fortunate as today was a Saturday of a Bank Holiday weekend so most farmers had
taken the weekend off – apart from two.
We stopped at Gedney Marshes as Jim had been told that you had a
good view of The Wash from here. We
wended our way down a very narrow lane that ran alongside a navigation
channel. Interestingly they have here a
big sign asking drivers to switch off their headlights if a ship is coming
along the channel. I expect that either
they don’t want to dazzle the ship’s master, or the lights might be mistaken
for navigation lights. However, I’m not sure what the poor car driver is
expected to do if he has to drive next to a waterway at night with no lights.
We drove a few miles down this lane, got to the end and walked
to the high bank above what we thought was the Wash, but, when we got there the
ocean was not to be seen. There was just
a large expanse of nothing! Grass and
mud stretching as far as we could see. Jim
was very disappointed. We hardly saw the ocean at any time we were in Lincolnshire. We were either in roadways lower than the
banking built to hold back the ocean, or the ocean was many miles away across
the mud fields. Good for growing more
potatoes no doubt. So basically we saw
nothing, because there is nothing to see.
One benefit of all of this though is that we stood still and also could
hear nothing. Silence, broken only now
and then by bird song. That in itself
made the nothingness of Lincolnshire worthwhile.
Our next destination was Skegness. Those of you who have read “The Road to
Little Dribbling” will have seen the Jolly Sailor on the front cover of the
book. He is now the symbol of Skegness
(or Skeggy as the locals call it). He
was once part of an advertising campaign to encourage people to come to
Skegness. The line for the advert was
“Skegness is so Bracing”. This is a nice
way of saying it is windy and cold! Our
first stop in the town was Morrisons Supermarket. Boy oh boy, I don’t think I have ever seen so
many people wearing football shirts and track-suits gathered in one place
since the World Cup finals. And the Car
Park wow, there was certainly a lot of car park rage going on. We grabbed a salad (yes, honest we did) and
fled as quick as we could. We then drove
to Gibraltar Point a bird watching area on a promontory to the south of the
town. This had a good viewing point but
you certainly needed binoculars, not only to see the birds but also the
sea! The best thing all day happened
here, there was a murmuration of starlings; a moving ballet in the sky. What makes them do it I don’t know, but it is
beautiful to watch. The Point and the road
leading to it is clearly the up-market part of Skegness with nice homes facing
onto the golf course.
We eventually went into Skeggy town, which was true to its word
– bracing. There is the obligatory pier,
some nice sand, but in the far, far, far distance, across the mud banks, possibly
was the elusive sea. Few people were on
the beach, but the chip shops looked full.
Paul Theroux in his book, written in the 1980s, talked about the Mods
(scooter riders) and Rockers (motorcyclists) who would meet at a seaside resort
on a Bank Holiday, get drunk and then build up to a big fight on the
Monday. Well de ja vue, or the wheel has
turned full circle. There were groups of
scooter riders and motorcyclists sitting outside the pubs and amusement
arcades. All seemed quiet when we saw
them, but we were glad we came here on a Saturday and would be somewhere else
on Bank Holiday Monday, the traditional day for a rumble! We did notice a disability scooter on sale at
a “Kiss Me Quick” hat and souvenir shop.
No doubt the owner thought he might have a good chance of selling it to
an elderly Mod who wanted to remember his youth and join in the fun.
Driving on from here along the coast, eighteen miles to
Mablethorpe, I swear that every mile of the road had caravan and chalet parks with
the largest being a Butlins Holiday Camp and a nearby Fantasy World.
We then took the main road to Cleethorpes and Grimsby, thirty miles
of not being able to see the ocean, only flat fields and of course caravan and
chalet parks. At Cleethorpes we at last did
get to see the sea, (or it might actually have been the River Humber) but it
was perhaps a mile away. The beach by
the esplanade had good sand on it, then it became mud for about a mile out to
where the water was. We brewed a cup of
tea on the Esplanade and looked across to Spurn Head the starboard entrance to
the River Humber. Just before
Cleethorpes we spotted a public information sign that said “There are dangers
associated with drowning”. Duh - who
wrote this? The PC police no doubt, or a
lawyer working for Cleethorpes Council.
Perhaps we should advise them that it might be more appropriate to say
the dangers are associated with swimming.
By the time of drowning it is probably too late! (Yes I know it is not only in England that
people put up dumb signs).
Cleethorpes is the holiday end of Grimsby, once one of England’s
biggest fishing fleets. Sadly no
longer. They say the fishing industry
was killed by the EU, perhaps after the Brexit vote next month, it may come
back again. No doubt the “Vote Leave”
campaigners in Grimsby are expecting this.
There is still a Fish Dock in Grimsby, but all we could see were cold
stores and closed buildings, no sign of any fishing fleet (that we could see).
Our journey then took us along the Humber Estuary to the Humber
Bridge and our crossing into Yorkshire.
Tonight we are staying at the Ibis Hotel in Kingston Upon Hull. Clean and pleasant, but this being a Bank
Holiday weekend meant that our preferred option of small B&Bs by the sea
was not possible. The only rooms were in
hotels in city centres where people did not want to spend their holiday
weekend.
I tried AirBnB once more.
Hopeless.
Tomorrow we head up the Yorkshire coast to the resorts of Bridlington,
Scarborough and Whitby. Hopefully, the
sea will be in when we get there!
No comments:
Post a Comment