Chapel St Leonards to Mablethorpe

We were in Norfolk for the weekend and the weather forecast for today was reasonable, so it seemed a good opportunity to return to the LIncolnshire coast.  There is a choice of driving route between Boston and Skegness (either along the A52 all the way or north on the A16 then east on the A158).  We went along the A52 last time and along the A16/A158 today; they both seem a long way! This walk is probably at the furthest extremity of what is reasonable in a day, so if we want to continue our adventure on the Lincolnshire coast (when more of the coast path is open) we'll have to investigate other options. However, today the journeys were actually quite straightforward and we were parking in the Chapel Point car park, by the North Sea Observatory, around 9.45 am. It costs £4 to park here for the day, but that seemed reasonable, especially given that there is a toilet block in the carpark - until we discovered that the toilets are closed "until next season"... We headed towards the North Sea Observatory building itself, initially put off by a sign saying that it didn't open until 10am , but a realisation that people were sitting inside led us to persevere and we followed another man who just opened the door and walked in. The café wasn't quite open, but the toilets were, so we were on our way again just as the building officially opened.

We'd come prepared for a chilly day, with an onshore Easterly breeze, but we hadn't expected mist. There wasn't really a low visibility problem, but a slight haze did linger all day. We knew that we'd need to walk on the beach for the first 900 metres; we're not great fans of walking on soft sand so hadn't been looking forward to this, but we went down onto firmer sand nearer the sea, and enjoyed the walk, with atmospheric views back to the North Sea Observatory. We'd seen from an information board that we should return to the dunes somewhere near the Sound Tower, which is a good landmark, but in fact we noticed and followed the signage near the top of the beach at the exact point where the official route comes ashore.

The Sound Tower is the first of three "Structures on the Edge", apparently designed to enhance the natural coastal environment, that we encountered on today's walk. The Sound Tower is a distinctive if not particularly attractive blue structure, and I think the idea is that you stand inside and the sound is amplified. I could certainly hear the sound of the wind and it was probably amplified a bit, but I preferred the visual effect of looking out to sea through the narrow slits in the tower. 

From the Sound Tower the path continued on the landward side of the dunes on a rather muddy path with land to our left that was sometimes agricultural and sometimes marshy nature reserve. I enjoyed this bit. The path was quite well walked and we could always hear the sea,  but otherwise it was a lovely peaceful environment, with only the occasional call of a bird to interrupt our thoughts;  it felt as if we were a million miles from anywhere, in particular Skegness! The path occasionally went up to the top of the dunes, providing a view over the similarly peaceful beach.

And so we continued, passing occasional little car parks with picnic tables, though it was far to early for lunch. The next "structure on the edge" that we encountered, just before Anderby Creek, was the Round and Round House,  It is a small grey spiral structure that doesn't seem to have much real purpose (the website mentions birdwatching) but it was fun, and there were good views of Anderby Creek from the top. From the Round and Round House, the path led almost to the beach, then along in front of a row of houses, unsurprisingly several of which appear to be holiday lets. By the access route to the beach (where there were a few people about) we headed inland again, passing the Cloud Bar, the final "structure on the edge" that we passed. It's a nice idea to stand on top of a platform and be helped to identify the clouds, but the misty weather made today's cloudscape rather uninspiring! We continued to another car park; this one even had an open toilet block.

From the Anderby Creek car park, the path again continued to the landward side of the dunes and, after passing a few houses, we found ourselves in a lovely little wooded section, unusual for this area. At the end of this, we followed a signpost towards the coast, but this led all the way to the beach at Moggs Eye, so we retraced our steps and continued on a path behind the dunes.  Eventually, a sign confirmed that we were on the official route and we continued past Marsh Yard,  and alongside Huttoft Bank. There's an attractive new building, "The Boatshed", here, with a café with a seating area on its roof (presumably with views over the bank to the sea).  They were doing a roaring trade, which was nice to see. It was still a bit early for lunch, but we decided to stop.  We didn't feel we could use the café's  seating while eating our own food but there were a couple of older picnic benches here too, so we stopped and ate our lunch while watching the world go by. 

One of the things we noticed was that, while the route of the England Coast Path was signposted back towards the beach, a number of walkers were going through a gate onto an area of scrubland. That's odd, because the OS map shows a golf course here. Whatever, we decided this time that we should follow the official route, and we did. We'd seen cars coming this way too, and wondered where they were heading. The answer is the so-called Huttoft Car Terrace, described on the Visit Lincolnshire as a car park that is almost on the beach; today the sand had blown onto the terrace to such an extent that it was virtually impossible to distinguish the car terrace from the beach. There was a path at the end of the car terrace that was initially easy to walk on, but the depth of the drifting sand increased so when we saw a path leading back to the  "golf course" on the other side of the dunes we didn't have much hesitation in taking it.

We rejoined the dog walkers on the other side of the dunes and continued along to Sandilands. I'm not sure how much the structure between us and the sea is a natural dune structure and how much is an artificial sea wall, but there was gorse in flower on it and it was pleasant;  it turns out that the former golf course has been acquired by the National Trust and is being transformed into a nature reserve. Very definitely a step in the right direction! Past the golf course's former club house and the National Trust car park, the only onwards route was along the promenade.

We'd really enjoyed the walk up to here, much more than we'd expected to, but the second half was rather less good. The promenade goes all the way past Sutton  on Sea and Trusthorpe to Mablethorpe, a distance of 3 to 4 miles and the main problem was that it got a bit boring. I should make it clear that, to our right, the glorious sandy beach continued all the way. However,  the drifting of the sand onto the promenade, worse in some sections than others, also continued. To our left, we passed row upon row of beach huts of all sorts of different designs. Some were brick-built, like garages that had been built on the prom and a design that was quite common had concave roofs, giving a sort of pagoda effect, as shown in the photograph. 

A break for a cup of tea would have been helpful, as would a toilet, but most of the toilets that we passed were closed until Easter,  and while there were fish and chip shops open, we didn't spot any ordinary cafes that were open. We'd decided to leave the promenade when we got to Mablethorpe, for a change of scenery, and at a large apartment block, the path is forced away from  the promenade in any case. We headed across Queens Park, being amused by a group of pedalos in the middle of a lake, which Richard rightly thought were meant to be swans, but I thought were more duck-shaped.  We even managed to find an open toilet here. I had to pay 40p to get in and it didn't smell very pleasant, but it was a toilet; things were looking up. We returned to the promenade and here Mr G's beach café provided us with the refreshments we'd been seeking. It was a curious old-fashioned place, but again it provided the necessary. 

We decided to end today's walk here, but it was 45 minutes or so until the next bus was due, so we headed onto the beach.  I enjoyed myself playing down by the sea and managed not to get my feet wet. We then walked through the town to the bus stop and waited for the number 59 bus. We'd walked along the coast, and the bus initially stayed quite close to it, through Mablethorpe, Trusthorpe and Sutton on Sea. However, the bus then took us quite a long way  inland,  through Huttoft,  Mumby and Hogsthorpe before heading back down to Chapel St Leonards.  From the bus stop on St Leonard's Drive (where we had missed the bus when we were last here) we walked the short distance back to our car and had a good journey home.