25. Spurn Point

Spurn Point is a remarkable place, formed by longshore drift, with sand and shingle washed southwards down the coast from cliffs battered by the North Sea. Larkin's poem 'Here' depicts a sweeping journey from Hull across to Spurn …past the poppies bluish neutral distance / Ends the land suddenly beyond a beach / Of shapes and shingle The lighthouse is no longer in use but remains an impressive structure, pinned to this long sandy spit that stretches over three miles out into the Humber Estuary. Spurn is protected by the Yorkshire Wildlife Trust and draws birdwatchers and other nature-lovers from miles around. Whatever the weather, visitors are drawn to its shifting dunes, the force of the sea and its ever-changing skies. Larkin, who found Spurn's remoteness equally magnetic, often came here. He summed it up in his famous foreword to A Rumoured City: 'Behind Hull is the plain of Holderness, lonelier and lonelier, and after that the birds and lights of Spurn Head, and then the sea'. Postcode: HU12 0UB Geocodes: GPS (WGS84) Co-ordinates Latitude: 53° 34.6565 Longitude: 0° 06.9105 OS Co-ordinates Easting: 540140 Northing: 411078

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