Crossing the Humber

First we have here two photos from paddling towards Withernsea and after the landing there. Of course as usually with photos the surf looks much much smaller than what it was.

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The day we didn’t leave because the surf still looked menacing enough we went to do some sightseeing. Now Withernsea was something. Once it used to be a great and popular seaside town with many attractions. Nowadays it’s still is a seaside town, only it looked less glamorous and not very popular at all. And we had to show great effort to find decent coffee shop. On the other hand it has lighthouse which is situated right in the middle of the town.

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Of course it wasn’t always like that. When the lighthouse was built, there was no town, no houses. The lighthouse was built among dunes far away from eroding shore. But once the shore started to be strengthen the houses appeared and slowly spread all around reaching the sea.

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Right, it’s time to get to our heading for today. Ever since leaving Aberdeen we were told about it. We heard about it all the time. Crossing the Humber. Who cares we done Cape Wrath, Pentland Firth or something foolish like going over to Northern Ireland, history. Humber, that was what was getting us interest and fame.
Well now we know why. If the other crossings were hard, this one, was one of the hardest. Only ten kilometres from shore to shore, due to few launching or landing possibilities before and after the crossing, it is a considerable distance. In the end we made over 24NM without landing. The tides are strong, too and happily play with the kayaks dragging them left or right as they wish.
On the pictures our path can be seen, we held the same 150 course for the whole journey.

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And then there are the ships, big and many. We had four big ones passing us very close and few lurking in the distance. We also found a tiderace or overfall, and when we were fighting our way through them, I was only hoping that shipping lines don’t go through these. No, they didn’t. To make it more interesting our not so favourite friend, the headwind, joined in at the very beginning and kept us company at solid F4 all the way till the finish.

Fortunately the seals saved the day. They joined us in hundreds and followed us for miles, playing and showing of. Some of them also tried to splash us and succeeded with Michal getting few showers.

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We decided to land in natural harbour of river Saltfleet. At its mouth we met few members of Satlfleet boat club. They were very friendly and straight away offered us their grass for camping and toilet to use. There are very simple things that make us happy after so many months of kayaking.

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3 responses

  1. Natalie and Michal, hope you are progressing well from Saltfleet, it was a pleasure to be able to assist in a small way for your journey, if you would like to send a message to our web page we can put your project details on our page.

    Happy Paddling

    Commodore(Saltfleet haven Boat Club)

  2. Hey well done again guys. Never guessed that one would be so tough except for the big ships. Lovely photos of the seals again. I still keep wondering if I could ever do an open crossing like that. Am maybe doing the Wash in early September so will look forward to hearing how that goes. Lots of love .A

  3. Hello again. I am sitting on my own in a restaurant near Alghero in Sardinia looking forward to a few days sea kayaking here before heading home for weekend. I am well used to travelling alone but have to admit that the new iPad is brilliant for not only keeping me occupied on a long night alone but also prevents any hopeful Italian gentlemen getting too close. ( yes it is a stereotype but experience has proven to me it’s accurate on the whole!)
    So whilst sitting with a glass of rose wine I start reading through all your old blogs and decide also to click on six knots. Been great reading through older stuff as well as new. So since you state one of the things about competition is to see if people read it then yes I do! Sorry I have not been able to follow so closely over recent days. Been busy at home and have relatives visiting next weekend. Anyway. Your blogs continue to delight and inspire me. I really hope I cam overcome my natural risk averse nature and cautious approach to have my own kayak adventure one day. Circumnav of IOW is a big enough challenge for me this year but kind of pales in significance when I see what you two have done. Bye for now. A

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