Blue Moon's trip around the UK

No, I didn’t think it sounded like a good idea either.

The plan, you may remember, was originally to meet my next guest, Peter who, since last week, is now the second of five Peters to grace the multi award-winning blog, in Bridlington. That plan had been scuppered by Bridlington Regatta, so he kindly exchanged his ticket for one to Scarborough. In an attempt to cram as much sailing as possible into the five days he has available, we would then sail not to Bridlington but to the anchorage off Bridlington under Flamborough Head, then the following day to the more famous anchorage off Spurn Head, before heading up to Hull for a night in the marina, meeting another guest – Tom – and then heading down to Grimsby and on to The Wash. Such exotic locations – so odd that Sunsail don’t offer flotillas in the East Riding or Lincolnshire. But Spurn Head is one of those semi-mystical maritime locations, especially to someone born on the East Coast and brought up listening to their father in bargeman mode singing “Up to The Dudgeon and round The Spurn, pump you bastards, pump or drown” with great relish. To my astonishment I had read that tucked inside this famously bleak headland at the mouth of The Humber – so bleak that the lifeboat station on the end of it is the only one in the UK with a crew who live there full time – was a safe anchorage in which you could usefully spend the night before taking the tide upriver. And – amazingly – it was going to be my birthday! What better way to spend it than tucked up in a legendary anchorage, with good company and decent red wine? Answers below, if you must, but I suspect I was more excited about it than Peter was.

Peter (Watts this is, do keep keeping up) has form with weather, however. Last time he came, plans had to be changed regularly (A Cunning Plan B). I’m sorry to say this time the plans changed even more, and poor Peter has suffered some fairly drastic last-minute consequences which perhaps illustrate one of the many reasons there isn’t a Sunsail base in Hull Marina. This was the forecast for the night off Flamborough and the day sailing into Spurn Head and The Humber:

I would imagine that many readers of the blog will not have seen a screenshot of Windy app before, but they will probably guess that red is bad. 22 knots is not bad, but gusts of 30 are worth taking into consideration, especially when your plan is to anchor in an open roadstead behind some famously tall cliffs, then sail another 30 miles and negotiate the famously dangerous entrance to the Humber in the dark (because you’re warned not to try getting past The Spurn or the more scary sounding Inner and Outer Binks sandbanks when the tide is against you) with more commercial traffic even than Liverpool.

I thought about my options, and Peter’s train ticket, and reminded myself that I hadn’t got this far round the UK in one piece by taking risks with dangerous places with names like Inner Binks. To paraphrase a warning from years ago: wind forecasts can go up as well as down, and even if we didn’t get into some kind of serious trouble we would have at least one unpleasant night being bounced around at anchor off Flamborough. The seamanlike move would be to leave Scarborough that morning on the tide, sail all the way to Spurn Head that day before the wind picked up, and make it up to the marina the next morning. I made the call, and Peter took the news very calmly, or at least waited until I had finished apologising and had hung up before swearing at me.

Just to add some final Yorkshire entertainment I should point out that some people from Leeds had done me a favour: I had been woken earlier than I expected, and in time to consult the forecast, by the dulcet tones of the Scarborough harbourmaster who I now know to be called Kevin. “Fookin ‘ell, Jake!” he was exclaiming to the driver of the seaweed-harvesting ship parked next to me (yes, Scarborough is not such a traditional town after all, it hosts an eco-friendly innovative power source business). “Yon git that tied up power boat ‘ere yesterday, ‘ee’s only gone an’ used electric cable and left ‘t seacocks open. It’s fookin sunk right ‘ere on ‘t pontoon. From Leeds, he is.” This latter observation seemed to act as full explanation for the visitor’s lack of seamanship, and led me to wonder that if there was one class of person a North Yorkshire Harbourmaster might dislike even more than Lancastrians or Southerners it might be someone from West Yorkshire. In an attempt to be helpful I had joined a search party prodding the muddy water with long poles to see where the ex-powerboat now was, and we eventually located it just out of the channel, which was a relief. Kevin showed the assembled group the evidence – a piece of thin 13 amp electrical cable tied around the cleat with a granny knot. By the time I left at 1100, four hours later, the general suspicion was that the culprit was already back in Leeds, hiding from Kevin’s wrath.

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I’m sorry to say, and I have already admitted this to Peter, that the sail down to The Humber was better than expected, and a great deal less stressful knowing that I only had to worry about arriving in the dark, not about coping with Force 7 gusts. I sailed past the impressive cliffs off Filey Brigg which I had walked to the day before but not told you about, and then past Flamborough Head itself.

This was another very significant headland passed, and I reckon these are probably the last cliffs I will see until I get to the North Foreland in a month’s time, if I keep avoiding Force 7s. I also reckoned that whilst you might be able to anchor in the lee of it, you might regret doing so if you had a better option, and I did. Once past, I bore away, put up the assymetric spinnaker and settled down to a very fast sail south. Quite astonshingly I arrived off the Spurn Light Float, where yachts are recommended to join the commercial traffic scheme into The Humber, at 2035: the exact minute that Savvy Navvy the stupidly-named but getting-better-all-the-time navigation app said I would, adding another nail in the coffin of my paper charts and dividers.

The Humber, as I am sure you know, is (a) massive and (b) very busy with very big ships. Unlike the Mersey, which is probably as busy, the ships approach from every direction, and off the Humber mouth there is a giant imaginary roundabout for them, along with all sorts of shenanigans where they anchor and/or wait for pilots to guide them in. In a small yacht it felt a bit like getting round Hyde Park Corner on a scooter, and I wouldn’t have chosen to make my first acquaintance with it just as it was getting dark, but with tides running at up to four knots you are recommended to arrive when they are slack, so I was very pleased I did, and put up with the darkness. The VTS operator was as helpful and courteous as they all are, asking where I was planning to spend the night and when I’d be leaving in the morning. I didn’t hear any laughter when I gave my replies, so all seemed good. She even radioed me back as I was approaching Spurn Head itself to warn me that there was a huge ferry coming up behind. Her computer had already told her that I’d be past in five minutes and that the ferry would be there in 13 minutes, so I was able to reasure her that I’d be out of the way eight minutes before disaster would strike. There are times – usually several a day – when I am reminded that coastal cruising is an awful lot easier and safer than it used to be, but today’s whole episode was a prime example.

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After all that effort I was looking forward to a calm and peaceful anchorage, but the wind had started to build now and as I shot through the entrance on the first of the flood tide there were some quite substantial waves adding to the fun. To my surprise and disappointment, as I headed up in the dark into the anchorage the waves got bigger – whereas the entrance channel was sheltered by Spurn Head itself, behind it there is a quite an area of shallow water and even at low tide the wind was howling across this and the low-lying Spurn spit and kicking up quite a nasty and confused sea. I had no option – the only alternative anchorage is about an hour further upriver – so I dropped the anchor and resigned myself to a bouncy night. On the one hand, it was even more uncomfortable than I feared; on the other, I was very pleased to have made the right decision: if it was this lumpy in 20 knots it would have been unbearable in 30, and the entrance would have been a lot trickier in rough seas. At least there was the prospect of waking up in the famous anchorage – I had mentioned my plan to a couple who’d tied up in Scarborough and they had gone all misty-eyed. “Ooh, I’m jealous,” she’d said, “it’s beautiful.”

She must come from Hull, I now realise, or perhaps Grimsby or Cleethorpes. I consider myself quite a fan of flat, bleak East Coast anchorages, and have been known to describe the muddier creeks of the lower Medway as beautiful even before they blew up the power stations, but I was not prepared for Spurn Head. There is nothing to see but brown water and brown beaches, with a grey pier for the lifeboat and some grey lighthouses, most of which seem to be disused.

I couldn’t wait for the tide to turn so I could head up to Hull, which by comparison is a shining jewel of beauty. I was very glad not to be spending any part of my birthday anchored here.

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I did know that The Humber was big, but now I’ve seen it I can confirm that it really is big. Going up the north shore, Grimsby on the south side is three miles away. It took three hours to get to Hull, even with the tide under me, but it was good to get there comfortably, without too much wind, as again I couldn’t arrive until there was enough tide to open the lock into the marina. This did give me time to admire some pretty muddy and feautureless views: it made the Tyne look like a clear mountain stream.

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After such dreariness I was dreading spending my birthday in Hull, but it turned out to be another very pleasant surprise. I might not repeat the experience every year, but it was more fun than Spurn Head. The post-fish regeneration money has been well spent, and the combination of the surprisingly old town with the shiny new bits seems to work better here than most places. There is a very smart aquarium to help you find the marina…

…dry docks repurposed into arts spaces and lawyers’ offices…

…and shopping centres:

Best of all, the marina is in the cool bit of town. It’s a bit like tying up in Hackney WIck.

Sadly, the Museum of Club Culture was closed, so I went to find some more age-appropriate museums and they were excellent, and when I say age-appropriate they managed to cater not just to me but also to the crowds of kids on holiday. The Museum of Archaeology In The East Riding didn’t sound promising but it was great at telling the story of Hull – which apparently was a big favourite in the Iron Age and with both the Celts and the Romans. I loved this 4,000 year old boat almost perfectly preserved in the Humber mud:

…and the even better preserved Roman mosaics from the many villas around.

Then on to the even better Streetlife Museum, which was not a spin-off from the Club Culture one but a museum of transport which focused a great deal on bicycles. Just to make the birthday boy feel even more painfully old, it turned out that my childhood was now a museum piece as they were having a special exhibition on the ’70s:

Finally, two things that really cemented Hull in my good books. First, a moving memorial in the Minster, treated with the reverence of a war memorial, not to war dead but to a series – frighteningly wide – of deep sea trawlers lost with all hands:

Second, and best of all, the hands-down winner of a blog awards category all of its own: best preserved and cared for Victorian Public Toilet:

Oh yes. This was a birthday to remember. Thank you Hull.

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