Barrow upon Humber, Lincolnshire
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The Humber Bridge, from Barrow Haven. Photograph: Hessle/Alamy
Finding the way is easy at Barrow upon Humber. The north Lincolnshire village has a statue of John Harrison (1693-1776), the local clockmaker who finally solved the problem of longitude, making navigation easier and saving countless lives. It’s two miles from here along Ferry Road to Barrow Haven, a reedy creek reeking of mud and resounding with redshank. Henry VIII landed here in 1541, and there is still a tiny port, imported wood awaiting its fate beneath rusting cranes.
Little-used small boats list on greasy gunge where peewits probe for worms, as everything opens on to the Humber – which Michael Drayton’s epic 1612 poem
Poly-Olbion calls, “King of all the Floods, that North of Trent doe flow”.
669, Saint Chad is said to have founded a monastery here, but war and neglect washed over it even before the Vikings invaded. New Northmen arrived after 1066, building a powerful motte and bailey to watch the estuary – now long‑shadowed lumps imprinted by sheep that look up as you pass.
Dun-green ivied thorns, crimsoned with rosehips, part-hide, glittering
the claypits that gave this area its red-brick vernacular – mostly ceded now to coot and cormorant and zigzagging snipe. Sun gilds the cotton-tips of reeds, and ice-stricken grasses blanket the embankment, along which solitary walkers are seen from afar, significant in such space.
Unmissable under an endless sky is the Humber Bridge, graceful as the anchor-line of some stupendous spider. Walking across to East Yorkshire from Saxon-churched Barton, you feel its juggernaut-sustaining strength, and between rattling-rumbling lorries hear humming in high wires.
Below, sandpipers stretch shadows across striated slime, and the channel is coffee-coloured with unsettling silt. A coasting ship like an Airfix kit beats gallantly Goole-wards between Humbrol-hued buoys. Somewhere in the shimmering west, the Trent, Ouse and other rivers bleed ichor of England into the never-ceasing flow. On the return leg to Barrow, the sea can be seen or sensed out east, and something like infinity.
Derek Turner, author of Edge of England
https://www.theguardian.com/travel/2024/jan/06/10-of-the-best-uk-winter-walks-with-stunning-views