H is for Humber Bridge

 

I've driven over it, walked over it, ridden my trundle truck over it and sponsored numerous charity pram pushers to cross it.  It's nearly a mile and a half long and when it was opened in 1981 it was the longest single-span road suspension bridge in the world.  (It is now the twelfth longest.)  

I realised recently that I had never been under it. So I went to visit it again today.  I parked at Far Ings Nature Reserve and from there got on to the top of the levee running either side of the estuary.  After a week of glorious sunshine, that was the moment it started to rain!  Not a deluge, just a drizzle.  Enough to soak me.   But I was determined to go under the bridge.  So I did.  But not for long.  I thought there might be a cafe with a bacon buttie at Far Ings.

Far Ings is a national nature reserve managed by Lincolnshire Wildlife Trust.  There are reedbeds, meadow and scrub, freshwater and saltwater.  It's on a major east/west migratory route for birds and it's a breeding site for numerous species including kingfishers, bittern, marsh harrier, bearded tit, Cetti's warbler,  and barn owl.

I couldn't see any of those today as I just sat in the viewing room at the visitors' centre to keep dry.  But there was no cafe or a bacon buttie.

Instead I went to the Humber Bridge Garden Centre which is in an old brickworks.  The ornamental walls are built of local pantiles.  Aren't they lovely? 

And the bacon buttie I had there was lovely too.