Spurn is a unique, remote destination sitting at the very tip of east Yorkshire’s precarious coastline. JENNY OLDAKER explores a place teeming with wildlife
There’s nowhere in the British Isles quite like Spurn Point. It has been dubbed ‘Yorkshire’s Land’s End’ but it has none of the rugged cliffs or tourist razzmatazz of that Cornish landmark. Instead, Spurn’s low-lying landscape is a wild, ever-changing panorama of sandy dunes, glistening mudflats and sea buckthorn scrub. It’s a place that’s epitomised by big skies and sweeping vistas.
This spit of land is as narrow as 50 metres in places, but it’s more than three miles long, delicately stretching into the water; a narrow, curving pendulum between the North Sea and the Humber Estuary. Its unique shape formed over time from the sediment, sand and gravel that washed down the eroding east Yorkshire coastline; longshore drift moved the materials along the coast, creating Spurn’s narrow peninsula in the process.
Exposed and at the mercy of the elements, the land here continues to shift and evolve – as recently as 2013 a storm surge ripped through the land, destroying dune and road, and creating a tidal island. The event produced a ‘wash-over’ section of land, which gets completely covered at high tide (so visitors should pay attention to tide times when walking to the Point).
Today the site is owned by the Yorkshire Wildlife Trust (YWT) and this designated National Nature Reserve is a spectacular spot for wildlife, drawing visitors year round for its unique flora and fauna, most notably an unparalleled array of birdlife.
However, the site has a fascinating line in human history too. There is still evidence of the old village of Spurn, which was abandoned before the Point was cut off, as its few permanent residents gave up on the precarious existence of day-to-day life in this wild place. Further ‘lost’ villages exist beneath t
