There’s a corner of the Humber coastline which doesn’t appear to have a name. Across the railway lines from Gypsyville, close enough to the busy A63 Clive Sullivan way to be battered by the vicious sounds of passing 70mph traffic, this edge connects the Mean High Water Line with the Mean Low Water Line in an expanse of mud and grubby rushes. The path which runs through it is bordered by tall tatty wire fencing unneccesarily urging passers by to KEEP OUT of a vast area of crumbling concrete colonised by nettles. On the river side of the path the metal rail at the corner has been speculatively graffitti’d TAZ LUZ DENIS I THINK.
At the western edge of the port of Hull (whose major activity has for many years been at the east), this is a corner whose presence and purpose have been forgotten: a dockland edge without docks.
And yet any traveller who walks this way, places their hands on that graffitti’d railing and looks outwards, will be rewarded with the most breathtaking sight: a view of the wide Humber and its bridge, some two-and-a-half miles away.
It is the simplicity of its design which makes the Humber Bridge a work of such constructed beauty. That, and its position in nature. Today, its two great stancions punctuate a vast clear blue East Yorkshire sky, the shallow roadway almost imperceptively curving across the sparkling, great Humber tides. This view means that this tatty corner of Hull is forever a place of revelation and wonder.
No matter that the bridge has failed to bring a hoped-for economic renaissance to Hull – expensive tolls and a geographical position still too far east to attract traffic from the north-south routes have seen to that.
No matter that my enjoyment of this place was interrupted by the excited incessant barking of a dog chasing waves of its own making in the brown waters below.
No matter that the Hull-bound traffic, crawling insect-like and silent across the distant bridge would soon assault my eyes and ears as I walked the footpath towards Hessle, just feet below the vicious screaming carriageway, causing me to start anticipating weeks more of such brutal interventions.
No matter, because this forgotten corner is a place where perspectives change, this scrubby edgeland causes even the most irrational, crazed or illiterate passer-by to see new possibilities, this dockland path without a dock is a place which validates speculations on life and love, because of that big sky, that great waterway, and the beautiful bridge which negotiates the space between.