Manor Farm, Woodmansey, East Riding of Yorkshire

A very different day was this Saturday, starting with a dip into local life at the Beverley Rugby Union Football Club. After setting the alarm for 6 am, we were parked up outside the said club rooms at 8 am, and settled into a couple of very comfortable armchairs in front of the big television screen soon after. Members and locals soon filled both rooms graced with large screens, many clad in patriotic red shirts in contrast to our own black clothing, and all as noisy and as enthusiastic as those Brits who had actually made their way to New Zealand now filling the stands at Eden Park. I suspect that our fellow spectators were as disappointed as we were when the game ended up with a draw, if not secretly delighted the All Blacks had not triumphed. We left feeling rather empty, despite the coffee and bacon butties we had consumed during the game; a win or loss would have raised more passion. 

We called back into our camp en route through to Hull, picking up our lunch and changing out of our fan clobber, but still managed to park up in the river side city by about 11.30 am.

Today we returned to the Museum Quarter, this time to visit the Hull and East Riding Museum, then after lunch in the Wilberforce rose gardens, Streetlife, a museum centred on a 1930s street scene of reconstructed shops, railway yard, and cycle and motor works. There is also an excellent exhibition of carriages complete with model horses and handlers on the first floor. 

The first of these museums is well curated and full of fascinating exhibitions, although much of it a matter of déjà vu, all about the Bronze and Iron Ages, the Celts, Romans, Anglo Saxons and Medieval life, however the rooms are tired and could do with a facelift. The second, Streetlife, was equally well curated and today very busy and noisy with families and a party of exuberant Girl Guides.

Outside we carried on down High Street, looking for the Maister’s House, a National Trust property according to our guide book, but it must have been deleted from their collection since our current reference was printed, or we were just too stupid to find it. Instead we continued down to the confluence of the River Hull and The Humber, a very muddy T of low tide. We noted the massive flood barrier sitting high above the River Hull and wondered what it was. A sign and later research explained this has protected about 17,000 properties from tidal surges caused by funnelling water into the River Hull for three decades. 

In 2010 four years of planning and two of repair were completed at a cost of £10 million. This was after the Environment Agency established that there was a one in twenty four million chance of a tidal surge occurring. The Hull Barrier is a 212 tonne (or 215,000 kilo) thirty metre wide gate which is supported between two towers that house the operating machinery. Money, grand designs, prevention rather than repair and renovation; all very controversial subjects of these days in 2017.

A little further on we had excellent views across the smaller river to The Deep, an aquarium which is well promoted and accessed across another lifting footbridge. We have visited many aquariums in our travels and the years preceding, so were not interested in calling in on this one.

We were now on a manmade peninsula between the River Hull and Princes Quay, a dock now surrounded by bars and restaurants and home to a marina, this afternoon just packed with crowds of leisure seekers. Here too is a decommissioned Lightship, the Spurn, a 30 metre light vessel which was built in 1927 and served forty eight years as a navigational aid in the approaches of the Humber Estuary. In 1959 it was driven ashore in the River Hull at Woodmansey, very near our camping spot, decommissioned in 1975 and bought by the Hull City Council in 1983 for restoration.

We made our way slowly up the dockside past the relaxed dining and drinking crowds, paused in the Princes Shopping Centre where I had a haircut, then made our way back home via the Tesco superstore just south of Woodmansey, stocking up for our next camp considering that the shops might well be closed by the time we finish tomorrow’s touring.