Monday 1 June 2009

Life's a gas ...

... especially in Easington.

We made a determined effort to polish off the villages and roads in the south-east corner of Holderness. It was a lovely day and as the school half-term break was over the roads and villages were quiet. We started in Hollym, moved on to Easington, took a look at Kilnsea then followed the road home checking out Skeffling, Weeton and Welwick on the way. All of the villages were straightforward, the GPS reception was very poor around Easington and maybe there's a reason.

If you are looking for a policeman in East Yorkshire and can't find one I know why - they're all in Easington. There is a big gas terminal there. When you drive through Easington on your way to Spurn point (there really is no other reason to drive through) you don't see the gas terminal, but by entering from the small road from Out Newton to the North you drive past the expanse of the site yet the real size of the site is still hidden because the gas is stored in huge underground caverns dug for the purpose. About a third of the UK's gas supply moves through here. All of this gas arriving from the North sea platforms and from a brand new pipeline from Norway is seen as a target for villainous terrorists hence the hoards of police, all cruising around in four-wheel drives.

Maybe the poor GPS resolution is also connected to Jonny Terrorist, maybe it is to make it hard for them to use GPS to target a home-made missile onto the site, or maybe it was just a poor reception day.

We went to Kilnsea, from which you get access to Spurn Point, a really wonderful nature reserve. We didn't go there today, we decided to spend a day there soon and I'll use that to map the site as well as possible. Spurn point is a sand spit on which someone has added the track down the middle from the out-of-copyright maps as highway=unclassified. This made be chuckle - they've obviously never been there. The track is moved after each storm as parts get washed away and although some of it is metalled, some is made of steel ramps used by the military just thrown over the sand. Not an unclassified road at all.

We did also see a great road name too.

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