Hornsea and Hornsea Mere

After walking the first kilometre, the disused railway embankment descends to a roundabout. On Marlborough Avenue it is worth making a slight detour to Hornsea Pottery (the site, now in a retail and leisure park, includes a butterfly house, model village, and more attractions).

Back on the main route, you descend through allotments to Hull Road. The route enters meadowland beside Hornsea Mere, an important RSPB Reserve and home to huge numbers of wintering wildfowl and coot.

The route passes the site of the deserted medieval village of Southorpe, one of many abandoned in East Yorkshire during the plagues of the 13th and 14th centuries — nothing remains of the village apart from some tell-tale undulations at ground level.

At the western end of the walk, there is a brief glimpse through the trees to Wassand Hall, a detached Georgian villa in private ownership. Beyond Home Farm, you follow an avenue of magnificent sycamores.

You return round the north side of Hornsea Mere along field paths, then a surfaced roadside path. Back in Hornsea, the first cottages on Westgate are particularly attractive and typical of the town's Georgian heritage. St Nicholas' Church in the town centre is much older — mainly Perpendicular in style, it was completed between 1400 and 1422 and restored in the mid-Victorian period, with a sanctuary well known for its 'lantern' windows.

Further down Newbegin is the Hornsea Museum, featuring local history displays and many rooms furnished as they would have been in the 19th century. On completion of the walk you can pop onto the seafront and enjoy refreshments: hot drinks any time of year and perhaps a cooling ice cream in summer.

Acknowledgment: Text derived from the Out and Out Series; Discovering the Countryside on Foot. Pictures courtesy of Wikipedia.