THE WITHERNSEA CHRONICLES - HOW FINE WAS THAT?

Day 2 of 4.

There was no central heating in the caravan, so the bedroom grew cold and sleeping was difficult. Nevertheless, I awoke breezy and ready for the day.  It was a glorious morning. A hazy sun hung low in the sky, and it was mild, almost warm.  There was no hint of a cloud. 

After breakfast, I took the dog for her morning walk.  I found the path to the promenade, a stroll of perhaps ten minutes, then, at a stroke, the whole aspect of Withernsea changed. No longer was this a slightly seedy resort well past its sell-by date; here was a quaint seaside town with a promenade full of interest, pounded by a crashing, angry sea.

The German Ocean stretched for miles on the horizon, only broken by a wind farm way out in the distance.  It comprised thirty-four windmills.  I know, I counted them.  The sea hurled itself against the rocks and groynes that formed the sea defences.  There were very few people around, just a few desultory dog-walkers.  That is the attraction of a seaside town out of season – the lack of people.

At the mid-point of the promenade, I came across a couple of miniature  stone-built castle-like buildings, which seemed to have absolutely no purpose, save to break up the promenade wall. They were clearly Victorian, and had the same crenellations and arrow-slits as a real castle.  A few yards further on, the conundrum was solved.  One of a series of blown-up monochromatic photographs attached to boards on a construction site contained an image of both miniature castles at the entrance to a long, spindly pier, no longer there.  The caption to this photograph dated it at 1880.  Another photograph showed Withernsea as a bustling holiday resort in the 1920s, complete with pleasure park and ferris wheel.  All the men wore flat caps and shapeless suits and the women cloche hats and drab overcoats. 

When I returned to the caravan it was almost lunchtime.  I made up a picnic and my wife, the dog and I drove back to the promenade. My wife and I ate the picnic in the Memorial Gardens, a small, green, pleasantly tidy area opening onto the promenade.   Fresh air sharpens the appetite and I wolfed down my sandwiches. The wind had strengthened and was blowing directly from the sea. We had to hold on to our paper plates to stop them flying away.

We walked southwards along the promenade and down a ramp onto the beach.  The tide had receded by then, leaving a stony beach divided by ancient timber groynes that ran at intervals all the way along the promenade. We strolled on until we reached the end of the promenade and then wandered back through the town centre to the car.  My wife, on two crutches, was quite exhausted.

We drove four miles to the south, to Spurn Point, the southernmost tip of Yorkshire.  This seemed to offer little more than a large expanse of mudflats and a posse of portly gentlemen in khaki shorts, check lumberjack shirts and District Officer Hedley (from Daktari) hats. They were all armed with powerful binoculars.  They were twitchers, on the lookout for the Lesser Skink or the Bob-tailed Avocet. We drove back to the caravan without stopping.

I was at a loose end after dinner.  My book bored me, and it was too cold and windy as the sun began its sharp descent to sit outside, so I took the dog out again.  We walked to the promenade again, where I spotted on the wall a plaque which read: ‘Eight hundred yards offshore from this point lie the remains of a thirteenth century church, submerged by coastal erosion.’ The wind had not abated and the inrushing sea cannoned angrily into the sea wall and flung spume high into the air. Soon, my spectacles were opaque with salt, and I had to remove them. 

Further on, my eye was drawn to a notice which told you what to do if you ran across a stranded dolphin or whale – not a particularly common occurrence on the promenade, fifty feet above the sea.   That notwithstanding, you have to try and get the animal onto its stomach, and pour sea-water over it, taking great care to avoid the blow-hole, and its savage teeth, at the same time ringing for help.  I saw three major flaws here.  Firstly, if it was stranded, presumably there was no sea-water anywhere near, and, in any case, how much sea-water could you get in two cupped hands? Not enough to cover one eye.  Then, how do you persuade a whale to turn over onto its stomach?  In the absence of Mr Spock in Star Trek IV, where he mind-melded with two whales and got a message through, it would be difficult to ask them to co-operate, as they don’t understand English very well.  You certainly could not roll an animal comprising fifty tons of blubber onto its stomach, especially with a mobile phone in one hand into which you are desperately shouting for help.

I sat for a while in the Holderness Gardens and looked at the winking strip-lights of a small amusement arcade into which a few bored youths were entering.  There was another arcade next door, altogether bigger and uglier, but it was closed for the winter – the doors locked, barred and shuttered. 

I had noticed several bunches of flowers tied to a pelican crossing in the main street, Queen Street, earlier, and I crossed the road to look at the cards attached to the flowers. I assumed a child had been knocked down.  I was wrong.  It was a dog named Suzie.  The messages on these cards were written as if addressed to a human being.  One said that ‘Suzie would be missed’ and that ‘Cassie would be lost without her.’  I imagined the scene – the dog bolting, the driver desperately standing on his brakes, the thud, the woman’s scream, the lifeless form cradled in her arms.  This occupied my mind for quite a long time as I walked back to the caravan.

Daylight was fading fast – the sky was a monochrome wash and the street lamps were flickering into life.  As I walked back to the site, a group of teenagers were playing football on a patch of rough grass, supervised by a man in a track suit and bobble cap. Behind them, the sea raged and roared in a ferment, but these boys didn’t care.  They kept on playing, long into the night.