Our drawing of the route — the shape of the walk, not a navigation aid. Carry OS Explorer on the hill.
Saltmarshe is barely a village at all, a hall, a church, a row of estate cottages and a request-stop station on the Hull line, and the walk out of it is the emptiest in the patch. From the station the route climbs the Ouse flood bank and follows the long outer curve of the river past the hall's parkland, high enough to see over the whole of Howdenshire, with nothing on the water but the occasional gravel barge running up to Selby. At the far end you drop off the bank into Laxton, a straggle of farms round the old Bricklayers Arms, and come back on the field lane behind Saltmarshe Grange. The bank is grazed for most of its length and the Ouse below it is tidal, deep and utterly unforgiving.
A nineteenth-century stately home in mature parkland at Saltmarshe, three miles west of Howden and a field away from the tidal Ouse, run as a country house hotel with a walled kitchen garden, a library and its own converted stable house and cottage. The hall's own Facebook page states that it has three dog friendly bedrooms within the house, along with the Cottage, which is also dog friendly, so the dog-suitable stock is small and worth booking well ahead. The suites in the main body of the house are not among them. The grounds are lawn, woodland and walled garden with no through road, and Saltmarshe station on the Hull to Doncaster line is a five-minute walk for anyone arriving without a car. This is the hall's own social media rather than a policy page on its website.
The tidal Ouse at Saltmarshe swings round a long bend below the hall's parkland, and at low water the bank drops onto a strand of firm sand and shell with mudflat and saltmarsh either side of it. Access is on foot from Saltmarshe station or from the lane past the hall, out to the top of the flood bank; there is no promenade, no slipway and no facilities of any kind. Nothing here is closed to dogs at any time of year, because the East Riding seasonal beach ban reaches only Bridlington, Hornsea and Withernsea. The flood tide comes up this reach fast and pushes a bore-like edge across the flats, and the mud off the sand is soft, so this is a place to stay on the strand and keep the lead handy.
One short email when we add places or a council changes its beach rules. No noise, easy out.
NO SPAM · UNSUBSCRIBE ANY TIME · WE NEVER SELL THE LIST
Wagfinder Members · Coming soon
NO PAYMENT NOW · FIRST IN WHEN DOORS OPEN · EASY OUT