Sunday, 14th April 2019
It seems like ages since I went out for a walk that wasn't "the scenic route to the shops" but my new Meindl shoes needed their maiden voyage and I had a couple of hours spare before my evening meal. So I had a lovely, albeit short, meander around Paull. This is my favourite local walk but it fell out of favour with me for a while due to over-doing it and it got meh, and boring. My last visit was in December last year.
This evening's walk was a much more leisurely and relaxed affair. Weak sunshine poking through the hazy clouds and a, ermm, how can I put it? .... Refreshing.... breeze coming down the river. But it was lovely and I still wish there was an option to make it a longer circular walk.
Anyway, a few pics (well, a lot of pics really considering it's only a couple of miles!):
I had a little race with the ferry as it headed out to sea:
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| Ferry leaving port |
I lost my race so contented myself with a nice walk through the woodland:
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| Woodland trail |
Although the trees are leafing up nicely, not much is growing yet so I was surprised to see these:
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| Baby bluebells? |
I took a trespass around the back of Fort Paull Battery. Fret ye not, the path is a well walked one and well maintained with the scrub and brambles being regularly cut back, it's just not marked on the map that's all. It's paths like these that make me care less about whether or not the "only" paths you can walk are official rights of way:
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| Paull Church |
After reaching the road, it was a short plod along it before turning off down a farm track.
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| Saltend cooling towers from the road |
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| The other side of the Church |
I headed along the farm track and decided someone must have flattened it. This is what constitutes a hill around here:
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| Farm track (and massive hill....not) |
At the pointless gate and stile, I turned off-piste to walk to the bird hide. I'm truly gobsmacked how dry this usually marshy land is, with large cracks, normally associated with the height of summer, already appearing:
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| Cracks in the usually wet, marshy ground |
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| Looking across the salt flats to the Humber |
I didn't stop at the bird hide - the wind was in the wrong direction and the hide didn't provide any shelter at all. So I carried on along the parched ground which sounded hollow it was so dry.
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| Random patch of primroses |
I finally got to the river bank. The tide was out. I decided to test my new Meindls on the rocky "beach" of the estuary.
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Looking across to the Humber Bridge
(not that you can see it in the pic) |
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Wind turbine factory doing a roaring trade
(these are the uprights for the blades) |
I acquired a 4 legged friend on the beach, his humans shouting him back frantically, along with telling me he's friendly... yes, he was very friendly and I have the paw prints to prove it!
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| Poor attempt at an arty-farty pic |
And so it was back to civilisation along the newly "refurbished" flood embankment, complete with wheelchair accessible path. On the one hand, it's good that the houses affected by the tidal surge a couple of years ago are now protected and it's good that wheelchairs users can access a bit of wild and woolly, but on the other hand, it's somehow tamed and urbanised the walk.
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| Signpost OCD |
So that was that. A lovely early evening walk and I feel really quite invigorated for doing it.
And my new Meindl shoes? Passed with flying colours. Comfy straight out of the box, as I knew they would be as soon as I put them on in the shop. No excuses for not walking now eh?!
Thanks for looking 😊
