There was little navigation to be done at this point, as all you did was to follow the green dike road. The villages and hamlets at this end of the estuary are a mile or two in from the shore. Occasionally we could see the odd rooftop but nothing of any size after Skeffling until we moved inland later to negotiate our way around a water hazard.
Despite the level of shipping using the estuary, both banks are a haven for a huge diversity of wildlife and the potential for conflict between competing demands is never far away. Urban and rural; industrial and agricultural; human and animal requirements of land use come together on this coast and often have competing priorities. The range of organisations involved in the strategic planning effort is vast and ensuring everyone has their say must be a monumental task.
On this stretch we passed the commemorative plaque to flood defensive work undertaken in 1983-85 at Sunk Island to raise the level of the outer bank by 3.3 metres above the mean high water mark. Sunk Island started off as a sandbank in the Humber Estuary in the open sea and is now a small community about one mile north from the estuary. With accumulations of material over the years the sand bank gradually raised and following the building of a bank to the front of it began to be used as agricultural land. In 2011 the parish had a population of about 211.
As we passed over the bridge we met a group of birdwatchers and passed the time of day with them. They were not at all surprised that we were trying to walk the coast of Britain, observing that they had met a number of other people in recent years undertaking the same journey.
As we walked back we reviewed the walking we had done over the last eight or nine days and felt a quiet satisfaction that we were able to finish it off with a twenty-miler and not feel too wrecked. Homeward bound tomorrow to plan the next stage of our little adventure.