Hessle to South Cave - 13 miles

Breakfast, Hull station and seven minutes of grey urbanisation - warehouses, concrete, industry - drifting slowly past outside our train window was the precursor to the start of our journey. They said the weather would be coming from the north and at Hessle we stepped out to meet it; the bite of the air on the face spoke of winter snow and ice from the Arctic while the blue sky spoke of a summer trying to arrive. 

We left the tiny station. Light rain briefly drifted through as we crossed rail and road to reach the Humber shoreline, the start of the route and of our break from the spread of the city. Birds waded near the water's edge leaving meandering trails of prints in the soft, sunlit mud. Our trail along the shingle was straighter but harder to spot as we made our way towards the graceful, imposing arc of the Humber Bridge spanning in one sweep the one-and-a-half miles from this shore to the next.

Shingle shore became gravel track. Track became grass and a diversion through North Ferriby to avoid the muddy shoreline of the low tide route, despite the timings working in our favour.  We climbed away from the river  and towards the countryside - up the gentle slope of a valley now masked by a town's streets - and headed into woods of bare trees and the tilled chalky fields beyond. It was a landscape in transition with the last sprinkling of brown winter leaves accompanying the yellow and white of celandine and snowdrop which heralded the arrival of spring.

Wenton gave us the opportunity for coffee, a tiny village with a tiny stream alongside the road running down to pool around the church like a protective moat. We headed into a narrow dale, a sharp V pressed by some godly hand into the grassy landscape and standing angular against the clear sky. Logging forced us to back track and climb its steep side from where we could see spidery strands of rain against the blue. Soon after, the gloom beneath the ridge tree line became gloomier and our muddy path muddier as we were forced to zip ourselves up against hail.

 

In the grey of the afternoon we walked a long chalky track and spoke of the Ridgeway. The high and straight path, rutted and soft, was everything I remembered of times on that route. Only the Humber river sparkling far ahead and below us suggested we might be elsewhere. Grey skies gave way to showers as we dropped into the rain misted village of South Cave, negotiating more muddy track, vines and coppiced willow to reach the certainty of tarmac, and the warm and dry of our overnight pub.