When you’re as far east as Hull it pays to take the opportunity to visit one of our most geographic remarkable features, one that (like midweek drinking) probably won’t be with us in another 20 years time. And pay homage to one of our most remarkable pub survivors.
The walk from the Kilnsea car park takes about an hour each way, well beyond the reach of the average CAMRA member, of course. Consequently Spurn’s lone pub gets short thrift from (otherwise venerable) Hull & East Yorks CAMRA, more focused on Dizzy Blondes in Driffield and beer festivals at North Ferriby FC.
Perhaps the best view of Spurn Head is from the air, but unlike Pubmeister I don’t have a private jet so this is courtesy of Bing Maps.
Note the boat just west of the spit. It’s actually delivering supplies from Docks Beers in Grimsby to the Dolphin, once one of 17 pubs on Spurn but now clinging on and waiting for ACV status or an attractive offer from a member of Radiohead to buy it as an art piece.
Of course, if the locals wanted their own micropub, now compulsory in all West Lancashire and Kent villages, there’s a number of sites that could be converted.
My only photos of the Dolphin were taken some years ago. There may be more on Alan Winfield’s site, of course.
Outdoor toilets, inevitably, though no-one will see you taking a leak unless they’ve got binoculars like those twitchers. Oh.
I actually thought I’d captured the eponymous dolphins but Mrs RM tells me these are actually seals. Pedant.
Apparently the Dolphin has only been visited 7 times in the 12 years since the smoking ban, resulting in a paltry number of NBSS scores. The one pin of York Guzzler is reported to nonetheless be in better condition than the one in Llansilin.
Hull CAMRA may be missing a trick here. The battle to have the most remote entry in the Beer Guide is keenly fought since the Old Forge in Inverie dropped out following the refusal to give whisky tasters.
The Dolphin could well compete with that Welsh beach pub and the Conservative Club in Maidenhead that’s accessed by a fracture in the space-time continuum.
Failing that, perhaps they should crowd-fund an extension to the half-completed bridge from the jetty so visits are possible outside low tide.
Now that would be campaigning.
Lovely stuff. It’s a remarkable place that it, as you say, being left to gradually disappear. Don’t recall a pub there at all so enjoyed the pics. Great birdwatching destination together with Bempton Cliffs up the coast, the site of England’s only gannetry.
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You mentioned you still had a tick out that way so perhaps you could walk down to Spurn Point and then commandeer a boat out to it. Tell the Maltmeister it was in the Guide in 1969 and he’ll probably row you there.
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Just checked with the Maltmeister. He says he is not willing to row but will pick me up in his speedboat.
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Well done in spotting the Dolphin; I was under the impression that it was only revealed to the most dedicated GBG completists, who are then retired to the location and sustained on pints of OBB, Humphrey having obtained it as being the exact type of pub that Sams have always preferred.
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I was actually only up in Scotland with Mrs RM the other week so I could meet Colin Valentine who revealed the GBG secrets over a pint or tow of BrewDog’s End of History.
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I’ve always denied that the evening I took Mr and Mrs Valentine out in Haarlem had nothing to do with his standing down.
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I need to visit that as soon as possible before it disappears forever maybe even tomorrow.
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You probably needed to have left yesterday, Tony.
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Well, if that bridge ever gets built, then maybe there’s hope for one over the English Channel? Among the many things about the UK, which baffle the Chinese, is why there isn’t one already. After all, they have a sea bridge thirty-odd miles long, and to a nothing-in-particular island too.
There again, they didn’t have to offer juicy carrots to the private sector – think Carillion and Interserve – to get stuff done.
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I hear the karaoke nights entitled Spit Toons are brilliant as well. Keep up the good work.
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Actually, when I was down there, was a bit like Lord of the Flies. A few scruffy houses, feral children, not sure how long their little isolated community will last.
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Top pictures!
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So was this really a wasted opportunity, or just another opportunity to get wasted?
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Excellent Clive (and excellent, Clive).
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