To the lighthouse

Spurn 'blob' (my title) - the goal (photo by David Nichols for YWT)

Withernsea sea front

The day off in pictures. Yesterday we cycled from Withernsea to Spurn and back, hence I'm lolling in bed playing with the laptop. A 30 mile round trip, it makes for a relaxed feel next day. Our new-ish car - the Skoda Roomster - is perfect for us, as we had it fitted with a kind of inner bike rack. As long as t'owd man is available to take everything to pieces.

Withernsea coast, heading south

Setting off from Withernsea sea front. There wasn't much in Withernsea to keep us there. On return, even after 30 miles of cycling, no pub was inviting enough to tempt us in for a pint. (If you work for Withernsea council, I'm sorry for this less-then-enthusiastic evaluation). You can see they have tried to stick the coast together with concrete in places to stop the erosion.

We drool

Suggested elevation, as sent to parsonage committee for approval

We have a potentially beautiful view from our vicarage, St Peter's church with its Anglo-Saxon tower, but there are only 3 very small windows facing towards it, one of them with a window seat and frosted glass. The second has frosted glass too and somewhere to lie down and doze in watery comfort, (a good idea - the bathroom tiles are really naff 1980s), and the third vantage point I only look out of when peeling vegetables. A real missed opportunity, and one of the things we miss in clerical life is being able to alter things as you would do in life outside. I drool over houses with turrets and towers; I like to look out.   See: Rapunzel

The thing that struck me about the Holderness landscape was that it was stripey.

Spurn ahead

Sea both sides - well on the way

WW2 boneshaker path

1852 Low Light

To the lighthouse - a little newer, but no longer used

Spurn lifeboat - I went on it once, not being rescued though

The big pic below is perhaps the most atmospheric view we had, looking south. A man on the beach in the distance (one of about three) seemed to be digging for bait. He's the little speck in the middle of the horizon. The other two aren't on this pic. There was plenty of room for them all to be well-spaced out! A light mist shrouded (do mists do anything else in cliche-land! Make a suggestion!) the sands stretching out to our right.






























I'm thinking I could do with a new bike with front suspension to help me cope with paths like the ones round here. Wrist-shattering.









T'owd man was chaplain to the Mayor of Grimsby many years ago. As part of his duties we attended a lunch in appreciation of the Spurn lifeboat crew. They came over in this lifeboat, and gave us a ride over to Spurn in it when they went home. The then mayor of Scunthorpe was at the helm, and put his foot down. We were by the railings on the lower deck, and were pressed against them so hard we had bruises you could see; they were well worth it.




Imagine living in the houses shown below on the Spurn blob!

On the way home, we admired the wind farm, which seemed to have a wind farm farmhouse. I imagined writing a children's story about the wind farmer getting up in the middle of the night to help some wind give birth to a baby wind. Putting the wind away for the night. Looking out anxiously to see whether the wind is growing well.

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Trips like this give one space to think about what makes life worth living; this came up naturally as we left Withernsea, where t'owd man was once interviewed for a teaching job he didn't get, thank goodness; we felt it might have been a kind of living death to live there. Perhaps that is their value, or some of it at least if it is not to be a purely self-indulgent exercise. But how can one translate this into something that has an effect on the world for the better? Ummm.

Lifeboatmen's families' houses

Windfarm, with windfarm farmhouse

Mummy there's a lighthouse in my bedroom! (Withernsea)

Harry, Ultreia!

In search of the perfect Eccles cake, I set off on my ride to the Other Side (of the Humber) and was not disappointed; combined with the quest for fitness and to lose the 3 lb I put on in the Whitby hol, of course.

But a bike trip is rarely totally uneventful, and I was glad that the chain fell off my bike at the bottom of the slope up to the bridge on the Yorks side, as this was when I met a new friend. This chap stopped to help me as I wrestled, even to the point of not being fazed when I started to scream because I had got my finger end caught in the mechanism, and every minute (that's pronounced my-newt) movement of the bike in any direction seemed to pull the finger in further and I worried I would lose part of it. Not a help for an embroiderer.

So then we started to walk up the slope together, and eventually across the whole bridge to Barton. He's called Harry Webster, and you can't get a better and more straightforward Yorkshire name than that. He turned out to be a sports coach, and so I got a bit of free tuition from him in breathing. What you have to do is to develop your intercostal and outercostal chest muscles, and this is how:

Lie down, head on a thin pillow (or you can even do it standing up) and steadily blow all the air you can out of your lungs through pursed lips; really ALL of it, every last bit you can. Then inhale slowly through the pursed lips again, until your lungs are really full. Then hold the breath there for a few seconds, as long as you can. Repeat the whole thing 4 or 5 times to start with, building up to about 12. It will hurt, he tells me, but it is an exercise that has helped asthma sufferers to get rid of their complaint. Worthwhile doing whether you are in tiptop or poor health. 

Thanks for that, Harry, I hope I got it right here.

Harry told me (and said it was OK for me to tell the story too) about a time when he had been at a really low ebb in his life with family and financial problems and had had his sporting life potentially ruined by injuries from being knocked down by a car. He was just about to commit suicide, and had put the gun by the sofa overnight. In the morning, he opened the curtains; it was very frosty, and a shaft of sunlight lit up the garden. There on the grass were half a dozen kinds of bird he had never seen before. Wow! he said.
 He got rid of the gun two days later as a

 result, and his life started to turn round for the better from that moment. He told me the little poem he had written:

"Destined for some higher plane,
my efforts fraught with stress and pain
to conquer failure kept at bay
by thoughts of this another day."


We continued to chat about fitness, and how so much is dependent on doing what you do with good posture; keep your deltoids (muscles in the upper arm) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deltoid_muscle above your hips. And also, make an effort yourself, lots of effort - don't expect fitness to drop out of a bottle of pills.


And so we strode across the bridge together at a good pace. Bear in mind he is 68 and has 2 new hips and a new knee. We continued to talk about fitness, and he asked me if I liked walking; 'Indeed!' I said, and told him about the camino de Santiago de Compostela, and by now I felt he was just the kind of person who would enjoy it, and who would contribute a lot to the group life that is such a part of it.

At the other end, we bumped into someone on a bike who knew him, a PE teacher, and I realised I had joined a new social circle! I took my leave of him, and felt grateful simply for the existence of good people, and for the chain dropping off when it did.


It's a great tea-time, folks! I just opened an envelope which turned out to contain a timely tax rebate of £76 from 2008 (when I ought not to have paid any tax at all)! I'm so lucky not to have an income, as it means I pay none! But at least this can go into my savings-for-the-camino, and it will buy me two or three days, or 45 miles or so. Today was just like a camino day or JLTC as I say. I even understand now why I turned the pictures into funny little strips.

Harry, see this - it's good, I promise!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c6az7f1n_HU
and this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2QFd_55El1I&feature=related

And some music for the journey:
http://www.amazon.com/Calixtinus-Polyphony-plainchant-instrumental-collection/dp/B000V6RD62

Oh dear, have I had a relapse into caminomania?
Ultreia!

Cycle Route One

Just 30 yards from home

 

http://www.sustrans.org.uk/what-we-do/national-cycle-network/route-numbering-system/route-1

We're so lucky here to have Sustrans Cycle Route One passing through Beck Hill. It's a bit like living on the camino, except that there isn't the same sense of a goal or of one-way traffic, and D comes in and points out the lack of availability of a meal for £9 including a bottle of wine. It links Dover with the Shetlands.

Republican ride.

Gosh, what an auspicious day! A year ago we were driving down through France to Roncesvalles for the start of the camino. Here you can see the Humber mud from the bridge at the start of our day's republican ride. We took bike route 1 across to and through Hull, and joined route 65 which took us along an abandoned, Beeching-ed railway track to Hornsea and the end of the TransPennine Trail. A round trip of 51 miles, and thanks to my bike computer was able to see that my top speed when pedalling down the slope of the bridge towards Barton at the end of the ride with a following wind was 30 mph. I was not displeased, and will try again with my jacket zipped up next time, as I think this slowed me down a bit.

Just Like The Camino!

Beeching-ed

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It's not Santiago, is it?