Work and life had prevented me from visiting Spurn for perhaps fifteen years, but on a whim, I booked a weekend visit. I should have checked the tide table at the spanking new visitor centre. But I didn’t. I’ve been coming here for all of my life and I know what I’m doing, I thought. So I didn’t check. More fool me because now I was stuck at the end of the Point until the waters receded. Even on a bright summer day Spurn Head is a cold, low place. It has a peace, beauty and remoteness that is entirely unique and I have always loved it for quiet holidays. The wind and the sea shriek and moan across this lonely sliver of sand and marram grass. Wheeling sea birds call incessantly and loudly. From time to time a walker or two brave the spit of sand that keeps this tiny island anchored to the rest of the English mainland and stop to stare out to sea at the end of the Point before eating their sandwiches and walking back again. When I last visited it was a rare event for the Spit to be covered by the sea, but now, thanks to global warming, it is common for the Spurn Point to be cut off by the tide. Looking back, I think I had read about it somewhere, but thought nothing of it at the time and forgot it. The lighthouse is the tallest thing for miles around but there is nothing else to break up the endless cold flow of the North Sea air as it chills its way up the Humber estuary apart from the tiny lifeboat station, a few hundred yards away. Like many such remote places, Spurn has its stories. Old men, of dubious hygiene, sit in the public bar of the Crown and Anchor at nearby Kilnsea and tell tall tales of mariners who don’t see the lighthouse and run aground in the foggy, flat dunes and now forever haunt the Point. Entertaining poppycock for the price of a pint. Through my own foolishness I was now marooned until the sand spit was uncovered again, which would be at least a couple of hours. A heavy sea fret swirled in and there being no other shelter I stumbled my way to the doorway of the lighthouse. It was at least out of the wind. I undid my bag and ate the last of my cheese sandwiches. It was going to be a long wait. No signal on my phone so nothing much to do. By now it was full dark and damp cold. I pulled the hood on my coat up and settled down to wait. I was quite suddenly aware that I was not alone. There before me a man holding aloft an old fashioned lantern. “Step aside there,” he said, “I’ve to light the lamp before this weather gets too foul.” I stood up and stepped to the side and the old boy went for the door, rattled the locks, went in and shut the door behind him. I thought it was strange, since I thought that the gas light had been removed years before. What’s more, I was pretty sure every lighthouse in Britain had been automated since the mid-1990’s. But I just sort of assumed something had changed recently and I was as ill-informed on this as I was on the tide. Some time later the man came out of the door of the lighthouse. He held up his lamp and set off down the path. “Bloody thing won’t light,” he grumbled, “No acetylene. And in this storm too. I better get some help or there’ll be a wreck for sure.” He hurried off. Storm? I thought, what storm? It was foggy and cold, but otherwise unusually still. I huddled back down in the doorway, thinking only another hour to go and I should be able to walk away back to the pub. That’s when I saw them, staggering over the low dunes from the North Sea. Half a dozen bedraggled, soaked, haggard men. They looked exhausted. Rags of clothing hanging from gaunt limbs and hung about with seaweed and old net. One of them came within a foot of me but he didn’t see me, he just stared ahead into the fog. They all moved silently across the marram grass and on towards the marsh on the estuary side. I called out, but no one turned. I went after them and tried to get hold of an arm, but there was nothing to hold. I ran in front of them and spread my arms to try and stop them, but they just carried on. One of them walked straight through me, a heart-stopping, soul-chilling, terrible bone-marrow cold. They staggered on into the mud and out of sight in the swirling fog of the Humber estuary. “Stop! I shouted, but no one heard or reacted in any way.” I ran down to the lifeboat station in a panic and told the duty man what I’d seen. He just looked at me as if I was deranged. “Tide’s changed mate. You’ll be able to make it back to Kilnsea now,” He said, sliding the window shut.