Migrants Way. Stage 8. Aldbrough to Mappleton

 The day started well, as I drive to Aldbrough I spot a Barn Owl hunting just before Flinton. I park nearby and stand by a fence to watch it hunting around a grassy field surrounded by ditches and hedgerows by a farm. When I get to Aldbrough later I realise why the barn owl was hunting so late in the morning. There is a sea fret, a mist or fog coming from the sea due to the northeasterly wind, which is now clearing up, the owl probably didn't hunt during the night, more due to the moist air wetting their feathers than to the lack of visibility. Aldbrough is the closest stretch of beach to Hull, and in the XIX century it was promoted as the Hull 'spa'. Two hotels were built by a seafront road. Alongside this road, many bungalows, called cliff top ‘hutments’ were built. However, the lack of train connection to Hull, unlike Hornsea and Withernsea, and poor access to the beach as there were no defences meant that it didn't develop as much. Finally, the road, the hotels and most of the 'hutments' were lost to the sea. Today, a fisherman had braved the cliffs and was on position as I started my walk, just underneath the disappearing Seaside Road at Aldbrough.

No parking

Meadow Pipit

The mist lifts as I join the clifftop path. It is overcast, but there is barely any wind. As I get to the limit of the firing range I see another Barn Owl hunting, this is a first for me, two Barn Owls in two different places! An Oystercatcher flies over. From here on, I have to leave the clifftop and turn inland.

The end of the clifftop path

Firing Range going wild

RAF Cowden air weapons range operated until it's closure at 1998, due to coastal erosion. Ordnance buried on the ground falls to the beach and unexploded shells have to be disposed off by bomb disposal teams. This still has occurred regularly after cliff falls. The range covers a very large area, 240 ha, and this section does not have a clifftop path, but there is a road around the perimeter of the range. The timeline view from Google Earth from 2003, chronicles how the site gradually turned into a wilderness, with patches of thick hawthorn and gorse scrub with wetter areas and more open areas of grassland. There are some alder and willow by ditches and large patches of bramble. Since the place stopped being a firing range, access has been deterred. The site illustrates how wildlife can thrive once humans are taken out of the equation. I am reminded of the story of Chernobyl and how wildlife is thriving there.

By the perimeter path there is a swampy area that appears relatively new as there are death hawthorns sticking out of the water. I head a water rail, moorhens and little grebes cackling.

I start walking slowly, as the soundscape is amazing and is hard to take it all in: Chiffchaff, Willow Warbler, Whitethroat, Blackcap, Reed Bunting, Song Thrush, Sedge Warbler, Blackbird, Woodpigeon, Skylark and Robin, Linnet and then, a Cuckoo! I'm not sure why I look at my watch, it's 10:00, seems appropriate. The Cuckoo keeps calling as I walk, and on the way back I see two, the male calling as it flies across the scrub. Then I hear a Cetti's Warbler. Several times, I had to stop and just listen to try to disentangle the different songs to put together my bird list. 

Grassland

A hedgerow by a ditch, from where a Cetti's Warbler sung.

A board held together with large nails is an imaginative bridge across a ditch near Garthends lane.

Plenty of warning from landowners warning of the lack of coastal path access at Garthends lane.

Afterwards, I walk along the stretch of road between Mill Hill Farm and Mappleton. The poppies on the verges are looking beautiful. There is a lot of traffic though, the walking becomes easier after the Cross Keys pub, when a narrow pavement on the verge connects the pub with the village.

The view towards Mappleton

I haven't written much about coastal erosion so far during the Migrants Way walk, but on the cliffs north of Aldbrough the tide line is made of armoured mud balls, indication of active erosion. It is quite a sight.

A beach littered with mud balls north of Aldbrough

Rapid erosion
Made of soft glacial till cliffs exposed to the powerful waves of the North Sea, the Holderness coast has the fastest erosion rates in Europe, and for several centuries the rate or erosion has attracted a lot of local and academic interest (you can explore the rates of erosion on the East Riding coastal explorer). The prevailing waves hit the coastline from a northeasterly direction, so that the average sediment movement is south. Over 30 towns have been lost since Roman times. The names of the towns lost in the last few centuries cling to the cliff-edge in OS maps, in fields, lanes or farms: Dimlington, Out Newton, Owthorne, Sand-le-Mere, Monkwith, Ringborough, Great Cowden. Others have left no trace, their locations up to 2-3 miles offshore. Yet other villages retreated further inland, then calling 'Old' the village that was lost (Old Kilnsea, Old Withernsea and Old Aldbrough).

Sea Defences
Two rock groynes and a sea wall at Mappleton were built as sea defences in 1991, when many houses in the town including the B1242 road between Withernsea and Hornsea became at risk. The defences have slowed down erosion and allowed the establishment of a high beach. However, the effect of the coastal defences downstream - between Mappleton and Aldbrough - has been the opposite, and it now has one of the fastest rates of erosion in the Holderness coast (over 3 m/year on average).

The high beach at Mappleton. With the north groyne and Hornsea in the horizon.

Caution signs warning of the possibility of unexploded shells at the beach.

The view is very different looking south from the defences at Mappleton. A bay is forming, with the beach level much lower, often exposing the clay underneath. The photo was taken a couple of hours before high tide, and the beach was impassable as the sea lapped the cliffs.

I have my lunch on the rocky spit at Mappleton beach, and do a spot of sea watching. A raft of Herring Gulls floats just offshore, and behind them are two Red-throated Divers.

Red-throated diver.

 A couple of Common Terns and a Sandwich Tern fly south.

Common Tern.

A fisherman catches a flat fish. There are a few families on the beach, but it is very peaceful, and the weather very pleasant with the lack of wind. Time to start the walk back, though! I make my way back to Aldbrough by 2 pm. This has been one of the most interesting walks of the way.

Featured bird: Cuckoo
The Cuckoo is a summer migrant, a bird of farmlands, scrub, heaths and reedbeds, habitats where Dunnock, Meadow Pipit and Reed Warbler, the most commonly Cuckoo hosts can be found. Hearing the first Cuckoo used to be one of the signs of spring, but hearing a it nowadays is much more unusual event. This is because Cuckoo populations, like other long-distance summer migrants that winter in the African tropics, have halved in 20 years. The species has been Red Listed in the UK since 2009. Research supported by the BTO, including satellite tagging, has provided detailed information on the migratory routes taken and the likely causes behind the decline.

Walk information
June. 11 km. Start: Aldbrough seaside lane car park TA255394. Free car park. CAr park and toilets by slipway at Mappleton. Finish at Mappleton beach by Cliff Lane. 'The Old Post Office' tea rooms and shop. Beach access: slipway down to beach at Mappleton.

More information
Ostler, Gordon. Coastal Erosion and the Lost Towns of Holderness. Humberside Geologist No. 14

Sheppard, Thomas. The Lost Towns of the Yorkshire Coast and Other Chapters Bearing Upon the Geography of the District. PublisherCreative Media Partners, LLC. 370 pages