Roger Ratcliffe: Country & Coast

A few months ago the biggest tidal surge to slam into the east coast of England for 60 years looked like it was about to erase Spurn Point from the map, but paying a visit there this week I was relieved to find the fragile three-mile-long spit at the mouth of the Humber – though disfigured by the storms – has somehow survived.

As it took the full brunt, sea defences were torn through as easily as cardboard, the single-track road down to the tip was swamped by the tide, and the peninsula became an island. The waters have receded, except during spring tides, but some believe this is part of a natural cycle which sees Spurn washed away and rebuilt by the North Sea every 250 years.

It’s a theory that surfaces whenever there’s a major storm. After another breach of the peninsula back in 1978 I wrote a story for The Yorkshire Post quoting a civil engineer as saying “there is nothing anyone can do to stop it.”

Like Mark Twain’s death, however, it seems that reports of Spurn’s demise are exaggerated. Despite half a mile of the peninsula being gouged by the sea it turns out to be more resilient than anyone thought.

Which is comforting to all those like me who love the place. I’ve been there in every type of weather and it never fails to make me feel as if I’ve fallen down a rabbit hole and emerged in a different, magical world. This visit provided a view of grey seals, probably part of the 3,000-strong colony breeding at Donna Nook on the other side of the Humber, and a glimpse offshore of what I’m told were harbour porpoises. I was also treated to my first brimstone butterfly of the year.

Some of my most cherished Spurn memories, in fact, involve butterflies, like a few summers ago when I could scarcely believe the clouds of painted ladies feeding on sea holly.

Spurn is to twitchers what York station is to trainspotters due to the spectacular numbers of birds funnelled along the Point at migration times. I’m interested in watching native birds like marsh harriers and red-backed shrikes that turn up, and vast “falls” of swallows and house martins in autumn, but lost on me are rarities like those bedraggled warblers which wander off course in Central Asia only to be found cowering somewhere on the Point.

What I love most of all is sitting right at the tip to watch the endless stream of boats going in and out of the Humber, and the sensation of being at the very end of Yorkshire.