Day 111 – Mappleton to Withernsea

Our cab driver yesterday picked us up earlier than her estimated arrival time and so, thinking that this may not be uncharacteristic, we finish a good breakfast, check out and are standing outside the Victoria & Albert shortly after 8 o’clock with our host pondering whether he should get on his motor bike and go for a game of golf in Filey. Lo and behold, the cab arrives at 8:10 and we’re back at the tea rooms and under way at 8:25. High tide is at 8:30, so there’s no chance of continuing along the beach and there’s no immediate route alongside the coast because of the small matter of an army firing range just south of Mappleton. So we have no alternative but to set off along the B1242 which is quite busy and, with a marked absence of pavements, not particularly enjoyable. However, after an hour, we identify a route off the road through East Hill Farm which should get us a bit closer to the coast. In a few places around the farm, the track isn’t entirely clear and we need to double back a couple of times before reaching a lane where a woman walking a dog informs us that, in a few hundred yards, there’s a path leading down to the beach from a car park at a place called Newton. By now it’s less than 2 hours after high tide, but the beach is the most direct route to Withernsea and our maps don’t show any other ways of accessing it for several miles. We somehow manage to overshoot the path, but the view from a field just beyond it confirms that the tide is going out, and our final double back to the car park eventually brings us down to the shoreline. However, whilst we are able to set off along the rather shingly beach, the view isn’t entirely promising. We can see a headland just under a mile away from which the tide hasn’t yet retreated. It looks as though a bit of paddling will be required – or perhaps some patience to wait until the tide has gone out further. But when we get there, a third strategy is possible, namely to scramble (not without some difficulty) over some extremely muddy rocks around the headland. The same course of action is needed at another headland shortly afterwards, but we then have a clear run of 5 or 6 miles to Withernsea during the course of which, at around 12:45, we cross the meridian into the eastern hemisphere. We’ve booked a cab to collect us from the Captain Williams pub which is on the north side of Withernsea and we’re sitting on benches outside the pub just before 1:30. However, there’s still an hour and a half until the cab is due to arrive, so we struggle to our feet and continue for another 20 minutes or so to the lifeboat station on the south side. This takes us through the 15 mile mark for the day and we start walking back towards the town centre in the hope of finding an alternative hostelry for refreshment and to which we can re-direct the cab. But there’s nowhere that looks particularly welcoming and eventually we end up back at the Captain Williams. On our arrival, some customers who were sitting outside the pub earlier greet Gary and say what sounds like “Your steak’s inside”. This would have been exceptionally welcoming, but it’s not a steak – it’s a stick. When we’d been on the benches, Gary had been as inattentive with Twiggy as he’d been with Sticky in Scarborough. His attempts to persuade the others that he had in fact realised this and that it was the real reason why he was happy to eschew other pubs on the way back from the lifeboat station lack any semblance of credibility. In any event, there is still time for some beers/ciders and a bit of freshening up before our cab arrives and gets us (and Twiggy) to Hull station by 3:45 to catch our trains home.