Hessle to Barnetby-le-Wold: E2 Day 76

Today I began the Viking Way from a café in the shadow of the Humber Bridge.

A day of three stages, the first was to cross the Humber Bridge. At 2.2 kilometres, 1.4 miles long, and 1.4 kilometres, 0.9 miles between the two towers, this was not quick. Over the rails of the pedestrian path I looked down on the brown, swirling, waters of the Humber, way beneath me as the estuary reached high tide. At each end there were signs with the telephone numbers of the Samaritans and other organisations who hoped to save suicidal individuals from a watery and unpleasant end. I could also see from the bridge the route of the Viking Way along the southern embankment of the river, but first I visited the Vikings Way café. This was the official start of the Vikings Way and I stopped for a coffee and toasted tea cake while watching the traffic cross the bridge above me.

Viking Way Café, start of the Long Distance Path.

Starting off on the path by the river, after the Blyth tile works I looked in at the Far Ings Nature Reserve. Consisting of several lakes lined with reeds, former clay pits, I could see few birds through the large glass windows of the visitor centre. The man at the desk said the most important inhabitants were the bitterns. Rarely seen but often heard, he said, they cry for a mate with a booming call. As I walked along I heard the chattering of many smaller birds and the occasional honking of geese but nothing I could call "booming". I did however spot a cluster of cowslips, not so often seen in recent years. A sign beside the river warned of quick sand, hidden channels and fast rising tides. The Humber Estuary was so wide that, with the high tide, it looked more like the open sea than an inland river.

In the distance I could see some industrial plant. I asked a man walking his dog if it was Scunthorpe Steelworks. "No" he told me, it was a cement plant in South Ferriby, "Scunny" was some 12 miles away. A metal silhouette of a Viking directed me away from the river uphill and to the south. From the higher ground I could see the cement plant with a long conveyor belt leading, I assumed, to the quarry, which, although unseen, I knew from signs to be on the other side of a gate. I could also see the now Chinese owned steelworks of Scunthorpe in the far distance. Apparently it still has an operating blast furnace.

I was now climbing away from the Humber Estuary heading south into the Lincolnshire Wolds. These chalk hills were gentler than those in Yorkshire, more like a flexing of the landscape, distorting the fields. My path rose and fell almost imperceptibly over the miles. I was on mixture of white farm tracks, reinforced with chalk rubble; quiet single track roads of crumbling tarmac; paths by or between hawthorn hedges, or crossing open fields as a grassy track. The route tended to run in straight lines turning right angles at junctions. Two small deer grazed a verge, a buzzard flew overhead and rain showers came and went. A thunderstorm caught me unprepared. Thunder following lightning rather too closely for my comfort. Being hit by lightning is extremely unlikely but it does happen. I tried to stay close to the hedge. 

White chalk farm tracks with field of rapeseed on left.

Tree and hedges on horizon.

Thunder clouds gathering. 

An intersection of noisy roads preceded my arrival at Barnetby-le-Wold. The village is at a railway junction and my rooms are at a pub next to the station. Having seen references to "Parmo" in the Teesside area tonight I tried something similar to that local delicacy, a Chicken Parmigiana. Chicken baked with a coating of cheese (not parmesan) served with chips and salad. Quite filling but I could not resist the dessert of sponge pudding and custard, it reminded me if school dinners.