Of drain pipes and a polar bear

The junction of Princes Avenue with Spring Bank and Spring Bank West in Hull has changed a lot over the years. There used to be railway line scything across the junction but Dr Beeching saw that closed down. It ran to Hornsea and part of it is now the NCN 65 cycle track, though not until further east in Hull. On the south side of the junction was one of the first botanical gardens in the country, that has since become Hymers College in about 1890. The railway crossing was known as the Botanic Crossing long after the gardens had become academic. The road junction used to be a police- then traffic warden- controlled junction before traffic lights took over. The shape of the junction was better suited to human control than traffic lights, but it has taken thirty-odd years to redesign the junction to be better suited to the lights.

In nearby Beverley Road there used to be a pub called the Zoological Hotel marking the zoological gardens on the north side of Spring Bank. The pub shut down in the mid eighties. In the mid nineties the name was revived; the Old Zoolgical pub was built to replace the Botanic Station building. The station car park was where the coal yard used to be for the railway. The new pub, called the Old Zoological, is nearer the zoo than the old pub was.

The shape of the buildings shows how the road from Princes Avenue curved gracefully into Spring Bank West, to avoid the railway crossing. The old name boards survive on the wall, either side of a drain pipe which seems to mark the change. The place now doesn't seem to be quite the right place for the street name to change because of the new layout of the road, but the addresses of the buildings haven't changed so the drain pipe marks the boundary.

Close by is The Botanic pub, which also marks the existence of the long gone botanical gardens. Opposite the aforementioned zoological gardens was the Polar Bear pub, named after an inhabitant of the zoo. Sadly, the Polar Bear pub stands empty today, The Botanic looks like it might be going the same way but the Old Zoological seems to be thriving.

New roads and a castle

As the coverage of OSM improves, it is harder and harder to find roads other than small residential ones in East Yorkshire that are not in the database at all, but we found one today. It's always satisfying to see the red trace extending across the GPS in open space, showing it's a new trace.

We went to Skipsea, just south of Bridlington to see what was missing, quite a lot as it turns out. The previous mapper (tracer?) had used unclassified for residential roads, there were no road names, amenities like the pub, church, shop and school were all missing as well as most of the small residential roads, but of course it looked complete at a glance.


On the outskirts of Skipsea is a Norman church, All Saints. It was built fairly soon after the Norman conquest along with Skipsea Castle. The castle was a classic motte and bailey affair and all that remains today is the mound, now operated by English Heritage. The castle was built by 1086 but demolished on the orders of Henry VIII. Next time we're there I'm going to walk to the mound and take a closer look.

A bit more cycle route

We discovered a section of cycle route signed with the NCN signs with the number 164. It seemed to be a newly opened route with the number 164. It seems to be part of a route designated the Yorkshire Wolds cycle route, but I didn't understand the numbering system.

We had followed a section from Beverley to South Newbald (see last post), so yesterday we then picked up from there, following the route onward. It headed through South Newbald and through North Newbald before turning up a rural lane called Stoneknowle Hill. The local council started to use a specific style of road sign about a year or so ago, so new signs are easy to spot and this sign is one of them. The road did not have a name tag in OSM, so I was pleased to add it.

The cycle route then leaves the road for a rather stony track, that in wet weather might also be rather muddy. This seems to be the only way of keeping the route off the A1034, which is not the safest road to cycle on. Another short stint on a quiet road and the route then crosses the A1079 - the main road from York to Hull which can be busy and carries fast-moving traffic.

Where did the 164 go?

The route coasts down a quiet road towards the disused railway line that runs from Beverley to Market Weighton which now carries the Hudson Way.  At the T junction under the old railway bridge there was an NCN sign but not for the NCN164, only for the NCN66. I guessed which way to go and followed the signs for the NCN66 towards Market Weighton, but then realised that the signs had the 66 label on them but also Yorkshire Wolds. This is where the confusion lay and I only sorted things out in my mind when I had got home. The cycle route is called the Yorkshire Wolds Cycle Route, but it uses various numbered routes, including the 164, 66 and 1.

The route goes through Market Weighton, climbs towards Londesborough and into Pocklington following the NCN 66, before striking out again on NCN 164 again. At this point it is joined by the Way of the Roses, which is a coast-to-coast cycle route. This is the best part of the Wolds route by far, meandering through the rolling hills and valleys around Millington and up to the village of Huggate. Near Huggate we found a sign for another cycle route, NCN 167, which was signed as going to Malton, but exactly what the route is I don't know, so there's another journey to investigate. The NCN 164 now drops down a long gentle slope to Tibthorpe, which is where we left it to head for home.

Marbled white

Clustered bellflower

The route was very well signed, once I'd understood that it wouldn't be signed with the same number throughout. The scenery in the Wolds is wonderful, with views through the hills and out over the Vale of York and the Holderness plain. We saw some birds, including yellowhammers, linnets, swallows and goldfinches. We watched a marbled white butterfly flutter through the flowers, which included a clustered bell flower.

I would recommend a visit and I really look forward to investigating the rest of the route and the other route too.

NCN 164

Out and about today in Beverley we stumbled on a new National Cycle Route, which it seems has recently opened. The NCN 164 circles the Yorkshire Wolds and has "Yorkshire Wolds" on the the bigger Sustrans signs. We followed a bit of it on a somewhat diverted journey home. I look forward to following some more of it, which seems to be a circular route mostly on rural roads.

If you are interested in a cycling in a quiet, rural space with gentle rolling hills, villages with B&B and pubs and wildlife still to be seen, try the Wolds. When this cycle route is added to OSM it will be worth following, but there are other delights in the Wolds too.

Docks and footpaths

Shepherded between steel fences

Docks and public footpaths don't often mix. The modern dock area has to be secure, not only to prevent theft, but also to prevent unauthorised access to ships for people wanting to make unauthorised entry or exit of the country. The idea of having a public footpath running straight through a dock is a bit awkward, but there is an answer in Albert dock in Hull that is a bit unusual.

The walkway above the warehouse

The first part of the footpath is what you might expect, herded between steel fences to ensure you don't stray into forbidden areas. The next part goes over the lock gates, again carefully fenced to prevent any access to the main part of the dock.

The view along the warehouse roof

Then a surprise as the footpath mounts a steep set of stairs leading to the roof of a warehouse and the path follows a steel walkway along the roof of the warehouse to a short bridge and set of stairs that lead to the footpath along the outside of the rest of the dock. The view out over the dock and the Humber is pretty good but the novelty alone is worth the short walk from the Hull Marina to take a look at the footpath over the roof of a warehouse. You can see the map here.

A rather quiet Albert dock

Albert dock is fairly quiet now, mostly doing small refits on ships, including some large sailing boats. The view over the dock was particularly quiet today, but often there is a ship or two being worked on in there. The reason we revisited was to complete the footpath through the docks because the last time we tried the lock gates were open to allow a large ship out that only just fitted and since the footpath uses the lock gates we couldn't get across.

Crossing or not

I noticed a small change to OSM close to home, so, as usual, I looked to see what the change was. A guy known as Valentijn had added a gate to public footpath and a comment about it being locked. I contacted him to ask about this and following his helpful message I went to see what was going on.

There is a public footpath on a paved track from Dunswell Road to the service road that runs around the Creyke Beck substation just north of Cottingham, as shown here. What Valentijn had found was that the gate either side of the railway crossing was chained and padlocked, and that was what I found too. There were the usual notices that Network Rail put up on unmanned crossings so it looked as though the crossing was intended to be used, but that someone had locked the gates. It seemed to me that the public footpath had been blocked so I contacted the local council.

I got a prompt and helpful reply from an Assistant Engineer (definitive map) who explained that the footpath only went as far as the crossing gates at each side of the railway and that the crossing was a private crossing for a local farm. He sent me a definitive map, but I haven't copied it here since it bears the Crown Copyright notice.

He went on to explain that the farm has had a road built connecting it to Cottingham (part of the work on the substation expansion I suspect) and so the crossing is no longer the main way of getting to the farm. After some incidents elsewhere in the country Network Rail's Health and Safety Team looked at all such crossings and put up gates where the public right of way did not cross the railway. It is entirely clear that the public right of way that no longer crosses the railway is completely pointless, but Network Rail have clearly avoided a serious health and safety risk.

I and countless others have used the crossing for many years with no incident but we have now been saved from our carelessness by the timely intervention of the Muppets the Health and Safety Team at Network Rail, to whom I am indebted for doubtless saving my life.

I have, however, made a useful and helpful contact at the local council and thanks to Valentijn the map is now a more accurate reflection of the real situation.

OS Locator and being thirty years too late

In May the latest Ordnance Survey OpenData was released for OS Locator. This has been turned into something useful by Robert Scott in his Musical Chairs application and ITO World's OSM Analysis. ITO also provide a tile layer which I have used on my site, oscompare. These tiles get used in the editor imagery layers too.

The ideas of these tools is to show the places where OSM road names differ from the road names provided by the data in the OS Locator dataset. They both take a different approach, but both showed that two new roads had appeared in the OS Locator data that were not there before. We set out today to investigate them, and what we found couldn't have been more different.

The first road that OS Locator showed up was Stanmore Close. This area is part of the redevelopment of the Ings Road area of Hull. I have been anticipating needing to survey this area because some of the old council homes have been standing empty waiting for a bulldozer. When we got there we found that not only has the bulldozer done its work, but the builders are in busily replacing the houses. Some of the roads from Mitcham road, which were cul-de-sacs now join Mitcham Road with Camberwell Way. They have names ending in Close, but they are not now a close, however the names stand. I have extended all of the new roads that I could get access to, it looks like a bit more to come yet.

This is by far the best use of OS Locator in my book. It showed me that there was an area of Hull that had changed, I went out to check what had changed and improved OSM in the process.

We then moved to look at the second new road in the city, Garrison Side. This is an area I know fairly well, and I was very sceptical about there being any new road there. As soon as we arrived it was clear that something odd was going on.  The site is close to the place the river Hull flows into the Humber. There was a defensive garrison built there in the seventeenth century, very long since ruined and disappeared. The road suggested by OS Locator would have been along the garrison boundary with the river Hull. A new river crossing over the Hull was opened in 1981 and the bridge cut through the place this road would have been. The photo shows one of the bridge piers slap bang on the place Garrison Side would have been. At the other side of the bridge there is a small remnant of a cobbled street in exactly the right place.

The last time it could have been there was before the bridge was built, so why has this obviously non-existent road suddenly appeared in the latest dataset from Ordnance Survey? If anyone needs reasons to check all the OS data on the ground before adding it to OSM, look no further. In fact if you're looking for Garrison Side you're thirty years too late.