138 miles north of Newham the Greenwich Meridian finally hits the coast in the Lincolnshire town of Cleethorpes. [map][6 photos]
Marine Embankment, Cleethorpes [53.542°N 0°W]
A strip of stainless steel across the coast path marks the spot. It'd be a fairly anonymous spot otherwise, a mile from the buzz of the town's pier and promenade, facing the mouth of the Humber Estuary across the dunes. But Cleethorpes' borough surveyor had the sense to mark the meridian's crossing in 1933 and today a cluster of commemorative clutter has joined it.
The line cuts diagonally across the path, as you'd expect on a northeast-facing coast. It was provided by a Sheffield foundry with a view to proving that their metal plates could withstand maritime corrosion (and has passed that test with flying colours).
At one end is a signpost pointing towards several far-flung destinations including London, Moscow, New York and Sydney. The North Pole is 2517 miles away and the South Pole 9919 miles distant, which places Cleethorpes 20% of the way down this particular line of longitude. Inexplicably the only other item on the precise alignment is a hulking black bin labelled 'Litter' and 'Dog Waste', and I hate to think what the symbolism of this might be.
The other significant marker here is a two ton granite globe funded by the Cleethorpes Renaissance Town Team. It's only five years old but much of Europe and Africa have already rubbed off its surface so I couldn't tell if the meridian had been marked in a special way. Inscribed on the plinth underneath is the legend 'The World revolves around Cleethorpes' which is an admirably proud civic statement if scientifically untrue. The plinth originally supported a sundial, which means this location has featured at one time or another a metal strip, a signpost, a sundial and a globe - the full gamut of meridian markers.
Three benches face out to sea, or more strictly river. The Humber is still a couple of miles from entering the North Sea, the East Yorkshire shoreline low and very distant, with the occasional ship or tanker passing inbetween. Two garrisonedplatforms can be seen amid the muddy waters, Haile Sand Fort and Bull Sand Fort, built to guard the mouth of the estuary during World War 1. SpurnHead is out there somewhere, but being very flat your best chance of seeing it is to spot the lighthouse at its tip. Turning up on the back edge of a storm is not recommended, the view reduced to a thin grey line between the dunes and a leaden grey sky... plus the benches tend to be very wet.
The coast path is half walkway half cycleway, and breaks here for a brief red paved interlude. On the Cleethorpes side it heads past the back of a caravan park and five glum rows of garage-sized beach huts. Almost all were locked shut as I walked by, the sound of a whistling kettle emerging from the odd one out as a husband raised his binoculars towards birds wheeling above the salt marsh. Downriver the path soon reaches the Meridian Car Park at the end of Meridian Road and then an extensive (non-meridian) caravan park. Beyond that are the Humberston Fitties, a 1920s plotlands development of 320 chalets whose leases prohibit residency during the stormy months of January and February.
A narrow gauge track carrying the Cleethorpes Coast Light Railway runs immediately south of the meridian cluster. The railway has been sequentially extended along the coast over the last seventy years, the most recent addition taking it into the adjacent hemisphere, and now runs for a full mile and a half. The closest station to the meridian line is the terminus at Humberston North Bay Lane, its signal box plainly visible to the east. The other stations are Kingsway and Lakeside Central, the latter boasting a signal box which doubles up as 'The Smallest Pub On The Planet' (spoiler: the Guinness Book of Records disagrees). A whistle informed me that trains were indeed running despite the inclement weather, but the service which chuffed slowly past was carrying more staff than passengers.
Just beyond the railway are the ruins of the Pleasure Island Theme Park, which alas became economically unviable in 2016 and awaits redevelopment. The Meridian Showground nextdoor isn't having a good 2020 but one of the Meridian Point Craft Units is open for trading should anybody turn up. Venture further towards the boating lake and you'll discover a small zoo, a Chinese restaurant, a dour flat-roofed-pub, a taproom and a multiscreen cinema in what feels very much like Cleethorpes out-of-town leisure destination. But a steel strip across a footpath was enough for me, not quite the Greenwich Meridian's final landing point but a longitudinal link to back home all the same.
