Once again, I drove over to Hull today. The Tigers were playing Stoke City.
On the way, I took a detour into the village of North Ferriby that sits on the north shore of The River Humber, five mile west of Hull. My main motivation was to bag two more squares for the Geograph photo-mapping project.
It was a grey, chilly day. You could hardly see across to the other side of the river. Not the best day for taking pictures. Even the mighty Humber Bridge was hard to see in the murk. I did a short, circular walk that took me through a green riverside leisure park that occupies a site that was once devoted to landfill.
There I was surprised to see the scene shown in the picture at the top. As you can see, there's the outline of a boat set in the ground. It is a kind of memorial in recognition of the fact that close to this spot the remains of three very old boats were discovered by amateur archaeologists in the middle of the twentieth century.
The boats were the oldest known sewn-plank boats found in Europe and they dated back to the Bronze Age - some four thousand years ago. They were not pleasure boats but working vessels - used for transporting goods within the waters of the Humber Estuary and possibly beyond. Similarly constructed boats were found by The River Nile - dating back to The Ancient Egyptian era.
Such discoveries make you think about our ancient ancestors and the lives they led.
Before leaving North Ferriby, I headed into The Riverside Walkway Cafe for a latte and a delicious cheese and tomato toastie. Vital fuel before the football match which I am sorry to say we lost by two goals to nil. Boo hoo!
