Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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5.0 out of 5 stars
Edge of the world, 19 Jun 2008
I took the youngest of our children - just the two of them - out to Spurn Head last Saturday.
It was a bit of a wild day.We didn't quite know what to expect- I stopped in a car park, as it was, quite some way from the point, but we had passed down the east coast to get there, had fish and chips at Withernsea and been told that at some stage you would have to leave the car on the mainland and walk the remaining distance. We were in any case far beyond the ordinary map limits. It already looked as though it might have been at the edge of the world, and as it turned out, we managed to walk almost halfway across the spit before our youngest child got a little too tired. But she was still in good spirits and wanted to run quite a lot! So off we went back to the car, and by this time had realized that there really was a road out to the outermost point.
The road was very strange. There was sea either side, and it was very cold; We passed the lighthouse, and because we had been through Withernsea, we had already seen a short, squat structure, supposedly a lighthouse of a sort, but this was the real thing, remote, sat in the middle of a wet plain of sand and rain, in a rather dark sky. Our little boy wanted to go in there, but I said it was too far away, so we looked ahead and saw the lifeboats, which he was even more impressed by.
The rain had started. Just gently at first. Time had passed, and the sun was lower. Our little girl started to get wet. She was on my shoulders and really needed a bit more to wear, her little legs were probably a bit cold in the wind, too.
We walked out quite close to the sea, and the beach rippled and sank beneath our footsteps. I think she saw this, and although she was quite secure, she must have noticed that we were not exactly in an ordinary kind of a place at all - and got a bit scared. She was very brave though. We were so close to the point where the sea was all around us just because of the topography, and the beach was so wet, it was almost as though we were IN the sea itself at one point, and it was strong and cold and vast and peaceful; she started to fret just a little, and it was then that we all turned back.
The car was wet and I might have left a window open, but it hadn't been raining for too long. The road along the spit was strange and was crossed with impossible looking railway lines from long ago. We stopped to look. The small boy was very puzzled. Where was the train? I didn't know. Had we seen some kind of secret road, exiting from the sea, crossing the world, just momentarily visible, to return to some depth? Who were the passengers?
The whole area seemed inhabited by storms, clouds in strange and unnatural electric configurations, the alternation of light and thundering darkness, the feeling of the ghosts of deserted villages once perched on the edge of the waves, now swept away by the tide and the winds and it really was wonderful.
I have no doubt that in the summer's day that would follow, there would be clouds of birds filling the space between the road and the sea, but in that cold, stormy day there were none at all; just the empty windows of the birdwatchers huts; a few wooden planks and a window occasionally flapping in the wind; very little sign of any human habitation.
Perversely, I thought about the trips we used to make up on the high moors when it was hot and silent and wondered how many times I had wanted to sink into the heather on the tops and go to sleep. I was going to take the kids there the next time; try to explain that I had been there once, long before, when I was young, and the world unknown.
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4.0 out of 5 stars
his is a informative map with easy to read marking and very, 13 Sep 2001
By A Customer
This is a informative map with easy to read marking and very acurate. Good for finding places to camp and ways on foot to the villages around the area of withernsea and spurn point
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