We continue our quest to tick-off the country's disused railway cycle tracks, it gives us some purpose in deciding where to go next. We don't really have a 'bucket list' of must-see destinations here, not like - I want to drive through the Balkans to Thessalaniki, or the next time we are in Sicily we must take a trip to Stromboli. It's difficult to get excited about a few days in Holderness or a trip through the Lincolnshire Wolds, lovely as no doubt they are in a quietly English way. It has been Google maps to the rescue, click on the cycling layer and every bike track in the UK pops up as a black line, more accurate than the Sustrans map and much easier to use.
Which is why right now we are heading to a small campsite half way between Hull and Hornsea; the eastern section of the Trans Pennine cycleway ends here, 215 miles from its starting point in Southport. I find the pointlessness of the route deeply pleasing. Gill is less pleased about the prospect of spending a few days in Yorkshire. It's a place she regards askance, along with the rest of the North East of England and the entirety of the nation to the north of it, finding it all a tad unwelcoming with an uninspiring food culture where finding a properly crafted machiatta is needlessly tricky. I am more intrepid, willing to risk such privations for the sake of wobbling along an abandoned railway track going nowhere in particular across the empty, disregarded landscape.
As we rounded Doncaster on the M1 a thought struck me about how our preconceptions about places are related to their presence in our imaginations. For example, it is possible to have a conversation about the pros and cons of Spain versus France as holiday destinations not merely from experience but also because over time we have accrued facts, opinions and prejudices about them from stories in the media or chance conversations; both places have cultural presence in a way Lithuania or Slovakia doesn't. In these terms Yorkshire is somewhere else with predetermined cultural heft. We have shared notions about a 'Yorkshireman' whereas speaking about a typical Wiltshire person would make no sense whatsoever, apart perhaps to the inhabitants of Salisbury.
Partly it's a size thing. Though in cricketing terms Yorkshire remains a county, geographically it is so big it has always been subdivided, historically into 'Ridings (North, East and West); today truly sliced up into one Riding (East), three counties (North, South and West) and ten urban unitary authorities. It is the only shire to be classed an English region. If the SNP manages to unhitch Scotland from the UK and become a separate country then why not Yorkshire? In terms of area it is slightly bigger than Montenegro and a tad smaller than Kuwait, in terms of population, at 5.3 million, bigger than Scotland and roughly the same as Finland or the Congo. So I have decided to take matters into my own hands and for the duration of our trip declare unilateral independence on behalf of the people of Yorkshire. Immediately our three day jaunt over the Pennines becomes a foray abroad. We now could approach the outskirts of Hull with the anticipation usually reserved for arriving in San Sebastian, Syracuse or Corinth. Indeed so momentous was the occasion I was moved to commemorate it in verse:
There once was a writer from Hullwho found life depressingly dull,the world seems dark inthe poems of Larkin,his glass more empty than full.
Ok, it's lame, what did you expect - a work of genius? We are talking about Hull. We more or less drove straight through the middle of the city and it did look depressingly dull, despite the attempt four years ago to elevate it to a European capital of culture.
Maybe if you spent time in the place its charms would grow on you, The setting is spectacular, raising the question, is the Humber the shortest mighty river on the planet?
However, post industrial cool was not what we were looking for, we can visit our kids in Hackney Wick or Birmingham if a craft beer experience in a converted glue factory calls. What we wanted was a Yorkshire version of Gill's 'field in France', peaceful, sunny and bucolic. Amazingly we managed to find it.
Fifteen years ago the place we are staying was a run down pig farm. Then it was acquired by the present owners who are landscape gardeners.
We booked here because of its proximity to the Transpennine Cycle Trail, equally however the quiet single track lanes that connect the nearby villages to a B road running by the coast are great for sedate cycling. We only do sedate these days. Having grown up near the East coast neither of us have any illusions about the its resorts. With the exception of places like Bridlington and Whitby which are interesting places in their own right, most of the other seaside places have seen better days. Hornsea was no exception. Maybe the town's most interesting feature is the nearby mere. It's the only remaining example of a string of coastal lakes that stretched from south of Flamborough Head to the mouth of the Humber. All the others have fallen prey to coastal erosion, apparently the beaches of Holderness lose 1.8m per year to the sea and are retreating faster than anywhere else in Western Europe.
The only reason we visited Hornsea is that it happened to be the end point of the cycleway. The track itself was quite narrow and the section we cycled unmetalled. Due the the recent rain it was quite muddy in places with lots of puddles. Given that it is promoted as the eastern section of the Trans-pennine cycleway it is in a bit of a sorry state. No one seems to be maintaining it. Somehow we mislaid the route in the middle of a housing estate at the back of Tesco's. It was pure serendipity that we arrived on the outskirts of the town opposite the Number 10 Café. Gill had spied it out online yesterday evening pronouncing the brunch menu - 'promising'.
We were not disappointed. Traditional chippies are more typical of Hornsea, this place however would not have looked out of place in Stoke Newington with shabby chic decor, bare wooden tables and a soundtrack that resembled my daughter's indie playlist from the mid noughties.
Gill judged her eggs Benedict 'cooked property' which she regards, like a perfect machiatta, as one of the yardsticks of someone who knows what they are doing in the kitchen.
My brunch was a delicious mix of potato rosti, locally cured bacon and a poached egg sprinkled with poppy seeds, the toast came on a separate plate. To get chefy about it I guess it was a 'de-constructed' poached egg on toast.
We declared it a 'memorable breakfast' up there with the classic breakfast in America we had in the Manhattan Diner on Upper West Side or the squished avo by Lake Taupo - all unexpected small delights.
From here on the our visit deteriorated quickly. Like the small resorts we visited in Cornwall last month, Hornsea was traffic choked. Gill opted to push her bike along the pavement to avoid the chaos, I decided to play chicken with the SUVs. All went well until I reached the main street when my electrics unexpectedly cut out and I wobbled slightly and slowed up. This prompted an irritated' peep' from the car immediately behind me. As the oncoming traffic edged past delivery trucks the driver behind had no option but to follow me at bike speed. This clearly infuriated him, when the traffic cleared he deliberately squeezed past me with inches to spare; as he cut in close his travelling companion lowered the passenger side window and yelled, "Av you a fookin death wish or summat." They sped off in a cloud of particulates.
I caught up with Gill by the monument on the esplanade marking the end of the Trans-pennine cycleway. She was chatting to a couple who had locked their ebikes in town and walked to the seafront. They too were motorhomers.
Time to head back to the peace and quiet of our field in Yorkshire. On the return trip we managed to locate the bit of the trail we mislaid on the way here. It passed Hornsea's splendid old station, beautifully proportioned and immaculately maintained. You sensed that in its heyday the town was probably more well-to-do and stylish.
Half way back up the trail we stopped to chat to a man who was cycling with three small dogs in a trailer. It turned out that he lived in a cottage next to the campsite. After we bewailed how muddy the track was he gave directions of how to get back using the tangle of single track roads. He was affable, gentlemanly to use an old fashioned term, such a contrast to the boorishness I had just witnessed. In truth most people are nice, sadly negative experiences tend to stay with us for longer, skewing our perception of people and places.
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