This cycling diary on a tour to the Humber has its roots in a poem I wrote last year.
FORDING THE HUMBER
Dad said a bowler-hatted gentleman
in 1953 had traced a path
across the River Humber, two wet miles.
Dad was a trainee minister in Brough
in the mid-fifties. Was he an eyewitness
of the flamboyant lord’s achievement? Was this
old news that went on yielding stones for sermons
in his day? Since then, a few feet have trod
the Roman path the peer inferred amid
prevailing depths. And in another distance
the bridge’s towers scare you with their height.
I wrote the poem for a 2022 competition on the theme of byways. I don’t know why that theme stirred half-memories of my father’s recollection, which I must have heard five or six decades earlier. Dad died in 2011.
I found that the man who’d forded the Humber was Rufus Alexander, 2nd Baron Noel-Buxton of Aylsham (1917-1980). He was invalided out of World War 2 and became a forces lecturer. Other day jobs he held were as radio producer and co-editor of Farmers’ Weekly.
His book Westminster Wader (1957) has much stream-of-consciousness writing and many overlaid visions of places at different times in history and prehistory. And accounts of his wadings in the Thames and the Severn.
The Aylsham of his peerage title is in Norfolk and he lived in Essex. He was on East Anglia Bylines‘s patch.
A bike tour inspired by Noel-Buxton
My wife Clare and I decided on a bike tour in his honour. Not fording the Humber ourselves, but at least visiting the places where his ford left and met the shore, and riding the bridge that opened in 1981.
We are neither of us sports cyclists and take a lot more time to cover miles than Google Maps expects. My feet, since a problem in the 1990s, are happier pedalling than walking. Clare was recovering from a sprained ankle, and on this journey we were trying to avoid hills. My sister kindly offered to put us up for the first night in her village of Woodall, southeast of Sheffield. We took our bikes there by train to Kiveton Bridge.
Maundy Thursday, 6 April 2023: Woodall to Misterton
We wanted to get from Woodall to Misterton, some twenty-five miles away, avoiding the steep ascent at Gringley on the Hill.
At Everton, three miles west of Gringley, the OS map showed a footpath leading down to the Chesterfield Canal. But reaching the footpath from the A631 would have involved a wooden stepladder that you couldn’t take a bike on.
Right. Plan B: the fen-like farm roads and bridleways. The terrain was very uneven, so we dismounted and walked the bikes. It was slow and led to foot pains later. A group of farm workers told us of a preferred route to Misterton. But when we reached the recommended road, we found it was private.
Switching direction again, we made for the canal towpath. This was also uneven, narrow and overgrown. Our walk took us past the disused Gringley brickworks – the canal’s last commercial traffic in the 1940s. Rain was pelting down by now.
We left the towpath again for another bridleway of poor surface. And here Clare had a fall and hit her face with the end of a handlebar. The injury was highly visible, but we were glad to find it caused no serious harm.
After a day of rough cycling, crossing into Nottinghamshire, we finally arrived at our accommodation for the night. There was no signage to it. Even the booking agency’s online map didn’t contain the place’s name.
We won’t name it here either, as it was the most disappointing of the trip. The ensuite bathroom door had a peg that would not let it shut completely and the front door of our kitchen/dining/bedroom had windows of clear glass with no blind.
Knowing that this was self-catering accommodation, we’d planned to eat in a pub in the village, but we arrived to find they served no food after 20:00. There were restaurants in nearby towns, but no taxi in reach to ferry us to them.
I ended up biking a couple of miles in the dark and bought sandwiches, cake and crisps from the local Co-op.
Good Friday, 7 April 2023: Misterton to Epworth
We took this day very easy.
We biked on metalled roads to West Stockwith, the next village, where the Chesterfield Canal flows into the River Trent. The Trent has a tidal bore, known as the Eagre or Aegir. We looked for the time of its next appearance and found this would not be for another twelve days. But the Trent is picturesque, as big rivers often are. The Waterfront pub was serving lunch from 12:00. We got in the queue and ate outside, in the sun, with the canal basin and the river in sight.
We returned to Misterton for a Good Friday service at All Saints’. The pre-service gathering, when we arrived, was small; as strangers appearing with bike panniers, we were noticed. The woman who was to lead the proceedings greeted us, and I explained that we were on a cycling tour.
“And,” I added, “I grew up in this part of the world. My Dad was vicar of Gringley on the Hill for 32 years.”
“Ah! Was he the one who wrote books?”
“The very one.” Dad sold a number of crime novels to publisher Robert Hale in the 1970s.
After the service we explained the purpose of the tour. The 1953 Humber fording proved here, as everywhere else, to be an excellent talking point. Most people hadn’t heard of it.
The ride from Misterton to Epworth was a mere nine miles, crossing the county boundary into Lincolnshire. In Epworth, we stayed at the Red Lion. John Wesley, the founder of Methodism, was the son of the rector of Epworth and apparently stayed at the inn on visits to the village after his father died.
Saturday 8 April 2023: Epworth to Alkborough
The following morning, we crossed the river on the A18. Elevenses, and then lunch, eluded us in village after village, but we remembered Normanby Hall, a Regency mansion leased by the local authority from the aristocratic owners. From a visit decades before, I hoped the place still had a café. It did. At the outside ticket office, we found a plea for donations of bikes to the charity R-evolution.
Whitton, on the banks of the Humber, was the nearest we got to Lord Noel-Buxton’s southern landfall at the promontory of Whitton Ness. The footpath would have taken us a little closer, but we weren’t venturing on footpaths. In any case it would still have been somewhat back from the shore.
Our lodging was a couple of miles inland from this, a B&B called ‘Willowcroft’ in Alkborough.
Easter Sunday, 9 April 2023: Alkborough to Brough
Alkborough church has an entry in England’s Thousand Best Churches by Simon Jenkins. After the service, we, as obvious visitors, explained again what we were about, and for the first time found someone who recognised the story. She had, she said, been among those who cheered Lord Noel-Buxton on, seventy years before.
The Humber Bridge is a magnificent structure. Its towers are nearly twice as high as Lincoln Cathedral’s highest. The overall length is more than a mile. Pedestrians and cyclists may cross the bridge toll-free, and the path is very popular – it’s part of the National Cycle Network, like much of our journey.
We reached the north bank and made our way through the Humber Bridge Country Park to the Green Dragon in Welton. At Brough Haven, where Lord Noel-Buxton had entered the water, we found a board conveying much history and natural history. But, disappointingly, no mention of the fording, either his or the more recent crossings by Graham Boanas and others.
What should we have looked for?
I dipped into Places of Poetry during the train journey home. The focus of that resource is not on big names; Philip Larkin is a presence there, but no work of his is featured. Let’s summarise our ride with a paraphrase of him.
Often it is by byways that we live.
