Paull Holme Strays Flood Bank

In September 2003 the Environment Agency deliberately cut the Humber sea wall here and let the tide back onto eighty hectares of old pasture, and the result is the biggest new saltmarsh on the north bank and a Yorkshire Wildlife Trust reserve. Permissive footpaths run along the top of the new flood bank with the whole width of the estuary on one side and the south Holderness fields on the other, past a bird hide and the ruined tower of Paull Holme. Winter brings thousands of curlew, godwit, dunlin and golden plover, which is exactly why the Trust asks for dogs on a lead here rather than under close control. The bank is exposed, there is no shelter of any kind, and the mud below it is deep enough to lose a dog in.