POSTCARD FROM EAST YORKSHIRE

Bob Barton enjoys visiting the cheeky, extrovert uncle, and the refined but eccentric maiden aunt of the East Riding as well as the “Land’s End of Yorkshire”

- Bob Barton

Sleck the dust” means slake your thirst in the East Riding dialect. It’s what farmers would do after a hard day driving their combine harvesters. I enjoyed doing the same after my first day in Holderness, exploring on foot and by bike in unseasonably warm weather. Sleck Dust is a local ale from Great Newsome Brewery and it went down a treat at my overnight pub stop.

This hook of countryside-lush farming country extending east from Kingston upon Hull was a delight to discover. Otherworldly too, in parts. I refer to the “Land’s End of Yorkshire” – the Spurn peninsula – a narrow, four-mile-long arm of sand and pebbles between the North Sea and Humber Estuary. It is hammered by storms each winter and is constantly being eroded by the elements.

Once home to an army camp, armed with big guns pointing out to sea, Spurn is now peaceful; protected and nurtured by the Yorkshire Wildlife Trust (01904 659570, ywt.org.uk/spurn). A National Nature Reserve, it attracts birdwatchers from far and wide. I spotted some of them, clustered in small flocks and accompanied by cameras and tripods, near bird hides. The YWT operates tours of the peninsula using an all-terrain Unimog vehicle. Sitting up on its open platform, I felt like an explorer tracking the surface of the moon rather than a day-tripper a few miles from Cleethorpes (as the crow flies).