A fairly grey day and in fact as it turned out a fairly grey walk! Picking up where we left off a couple of days ago we found parking just beyond the rather depressing village of Easington Colliery. Formerly home to several Coal Pits, this stretch of the coastline is gradually being nurtured back to health and preserved as natural parkland. At this time of year everything looks a bit depressing and grey but maybe during the spring and summer with wildflowers at their best, it is a different story? It is only 30 years since these pits were closed and no more waste was being dumped on this coastline and its beaches. The first beach is Easington Beach, a mostly shingle beach, which was accessible but we didn’t venture down.

We have a few miles to cover today so we continued along the coastal path, northwards. Passing only the occasional walker sort of adds to the greyness in a way though this doesn’t really make sense as I normally enjoy the solitude of our walks! Next through the arches of Beacon Point Viaduct is Shippersea Bay.

A bit more sand here but a rather unappealing sludge covering the back of the beach put us off venturing far – there are frequent notices along this coast stating that you shouldn’t go in any water sitting on the beaches for fear of contamination – we take heed!

The last beach on this walk is ‘The Blast’ which looked a bit more inviting than the others had and as it is our turning point, we ventured down.

Here to Poppydog could have the freedom of a good runaround – oh yes and chase some stones!

Rather than return the same way, we planned a circular route back a bit further inland. However this soon turned out to be a bit of a disaster as the ground was very wet underfoot and in fact the light is beginning to fade on us which could prove problematic in finding the right footpaths! By this point we are already a mile or so inland so I decided that we would follow the roads back. At this point I also remembered that the car park gates were locked at 5.30 and as it is already 5 and we have at least 3 miles to cover!

We did complete this 9 mile trek and arrived back at the car park at 6, fortunately just as the gates were being locked, said attendant not having even noticed in the dark that my car was still in there! How lucky were we? Not a place I would have chosen to spend the night (even in the caravan)!