To be beside the seaside - North Norfolk Coastal Path part 2

Holkham to Blakeney - 10.9 miles

After Holkham the next stop is Wells-next-the-Sea, which is a small town with more facilities.  It's a walk I've done before, along the beach, but this time we struck to the path properly and found ourselves wandering down wooded lanes, behind the tall dark pine trees that this stretch is known for.  On another breezy but still sunny day, the shade was nice, and we had company!  A relay race was taking place, beginning at Hunstanton and going all the way round to Great Yarmouth over the course of a day or two.  We kept moving over to let runners pass, each wielding their barcoded baton.  We emerged at the carpark for Wells Beach and followed the sea wall back into the town.  

John captains the clinkerbill boat, so called for the Viking-style rivets in its hull.

I have lots of happy memories of Wells.  It was the seaside spot our parents usually took us to once we were old enough to not need all the facilities and diversions of Hunstanton, and it's still a great place to visit.  Small, with a little arcade and ride-on train for the typical beach-goer, a lovely beach and a sea wall that's always full of people crab fishing.  Dropping a line baited with bacon into the sea at certain times of day will almost guarantee that you'll pull it back up with a stubborn crustacean dangling from the end of it, waving it's little pincers about defiantly as you deposit it into a bucket (of course they are released again at the end of the day).  There's also the Albatross, which I refer to as 'The Pancake Boat', a ship-cum-cafe that serves a selection of drinks and crepes.  Since it's floating in the channel that divides the town from the sea marshes and runs out into The Wash, it rises and falls with the tide.  Depending on what time of day you visit, you may have to walk the gangplank up or down to get aboard!  This was the first time I'd ever been on it for a meal, and I had a pretty nice cheese and salad savoury pancake.

Leaving again, we had some of the nicest views of the trip, including passing the villages of Stiffkey (pronounced 'Stew-key) and Morston.  These are best known for the six hundred strong seal colony that likes to haul out on the sand banks at low tide, when they've returned from fishing.  They're always lovely to watch, and very curious about the boats that they've become so used to.  

Apparently the colony has been shifting locations recently, shunning the sandbanks for the shore nearer Stewkey, so it will be interesting to see if they stay there and what that does to the tour boats there.  There's another colony round the coast at Horsey Beach, so maybe that'll become the place to go in future.

Our last seal visit.  These few were hauled out on the beach,
but there were another sixty or so in the water round the sandbanks.

Sunset over Blakeney Point

Boat carcass in the salt marshes

The path back to Blakeney, where we were staying in a lovely little flat above a shop, is deceptively windy.  Five or six times we thought the next turn would reveal the village, and Dad's legs were getting a bit sore, but eventually we did make it back.  Somewhere small and quiet like this is perfect for us, and the road through the top of the village has a bus called the Coasthopper, which makes getting to that day's walking location really easily.

The view from outside our rented accomodation in Blakeney - straight down to the estuary and salt marshes.

Blakeney to Weybourne - 7.7 miles

This is one of the shortest legs we did, but probably the hardest.  Leaving Blakeney, at first it's more of the same firm dirt paths we're used to, but at Cley the lovely smooth sand suddenly morphs into gravel dunes, sloping more sharply down towards the surf.  This means that you're suddenly walking on a shifting, sliding slope of tiny stones.  A few steps forward also takes you one step down, so you've got to constantly turn uphill.  They ask you not to walk on the top of the dunes too much, as they also function as sea defences and too many walked would wear them down, but it was hard to make progress any other way.  At one point we went down the back side of the dune and that was much better, although we did have to contend with some very large puddles.

From the tidal marshes of Blakeney...

...to the gravel dunes of Cley!

The majority of this day was mostly trudging, each of us mutely contesting with our own slidey, draining footsteps.  Gravel really is the worst, but it had to be done and at least we had a sunny day for it.

As we neared Weybourne things suddenly got a lot noisier.  The Muckleburgh Military Collection has tank tracks and runway that peters off over the beach, so suddenly we heard the tinny keening of biplanes.  Three or four of then took off, one after the other, right above our heads, and circled for a while like metal birds of prey before heading off together.  We also saw a tank charging along towards the centre, leaving a trail of exhaust-like dust in the air.
    

We'd been trudging along the gravel for what felt like ages, but just as we hit the car park at Weybourne beach, that part of the trail came to an end.  There are low dirt cliffs here, only ten or fifteen metres above the beach in most places, but much pleasanter walking.  Having only just reached them, it was a bit frustrating to have to stop, but at least we knew they'd be waiting for us next time.  We went off for some well deserved lemonade.

Blakeney grafitti

On our drive back to Blakeney I made a request to pull in at the parish church, because of something I'd seen in a Youtube video.  Matthew Champion heads up the Norfolk Medieval Graffiti Survey, who have been travelling round the county documenting the medieval graffiti that appears on all the old stone churches across Norfolk.  I remembered him saying something very particular about Blakeney church... a column containing more than fifty scratched drawings of ships, covering over 200 years between them all.

It took some looking, because I couldn't remember which pillar the carvings were on, but finally, to my delight, we found them!  Here are some images from the project (carvings have been drawn over for clarity).  They are very faint, but once you'd found the first one you started to spot all the rest quite easily.  It's lovely to be looking at something that the people who lived here hundreds of years ago had left behind - some small token of the lives they lived.

Here is Matthew's talk about the project.

Weybourne to Cromer - 8.5 miles

In May 2017 Mum and I came back to tackle the final leg of our journey.  We left the car at Cromer and took the Coasthopper bus back to Weybourne, stopping to use a cafe loo and and a sausage roll.  We picked up exactly where we'd left off, at the start of the low dirt cliffs at Weybourne.  The day was rather less sunny!  Atmospheric, let's call it.
We picked up in the car park at the start of the cliffs, seeing ahead of us the first of the only two hills we would encounter on the entire walk: Dead Man's Hill, with it's lighthouse on top.

The cliffs just past Weybourne, looking east towards Dead Man's Hill and the drizzle!

Thrift, or Sea Pink, grows in tuffets all along the path.

Looking back west to Dead Man's Hill

You'll pass a short row of houses up here, bare metres from the cliffs, which are slowly being eroded down by the waves beneath.  Someday soon the people there will have to move out, and the houses will be left to crumble away and fall into the sea.

The next town we go through is Sheringham, which you'll know is coming when you pass the Lifeboat Station, and then a row of smart sea-facing houses.  The coastal path takes you along the seafront and past the main beach and museum, where you'll see a long mural painted on the sea wall by David Berber, following the history of human life on the Norfolk coast from Palaeolithic times to the present day.  Fossils have been found here, including those of mammoth, hippo skulls and bison.  The cliffs are SSSI (Sites of Special Scientific Interest) so citizens aren't allowed to dig there (and you wouldn't want to, as the unstable cliffs have been known to collapse on top of people), but much of the findings are still kept in the area.

Boats on the slipway at Sheringham, waiting to be taken out.

One end of the Sheringham seafront mural...

...and the other.

This fisherman stands in the shallows to stop his boat turning broadside
while he waits for his friend to reverse a truck and trolley down to the sea.

Out the other side, and up the only other hill we'll see on this whole trip, the Beeston Bump.  After so much general flatness it seems like a very large hill, but it barely takes five minutes to get to the top.  There's a concrete base of a Y-station at the top, an World War Two signal tower for relaying coded messages to Bletchley.  The Bump is also the home of the Black Shuck, a red-eyed hound of ill omen who lives inside the hill, and emerges to roam the fields, sometimes surrounded by mist.  They never harm their victims, but anyone who sees the Black Shuck will be dead within a year, so you may want to steer clear of the Beeston Bump late at night!

Sheringham seafront, looking west

Mum on top of the Beeston Bump, with Sheringham behind

At some point after this the path turns away from the beach and takes you up through fields into Row Heath and Great Wood, a deciduous woodland.  There were bluebells to see here, an older gentleman who kindly helped us decipher the map, and a stopover at the site of a Roman campsite!  Archaeologists had found the remains of their sojourn there, and it's a lovely spot; a genuine silvan haven of tall old birch trees wood which I think would have made the Romans very happy when they were so far from home.  Now there's just the birds and insects, and the odd adder.  It's a very peaceful place for a break and a bite to eat before the last push to Cromer.

The Coastal Path now takes you south to the landward side of the town, and then downhill towards the sea again, so you get to see a few of the sights before reaching the pier and the end of our walk.

Cromer Beach, looking East

We asked a nice man in a studded leather jacket to take a photo of us together.  He even managed to get Cromer pier in behind us.  Good job, sir.

Our final stop at Cromer Pier!

At the far end of the pier is the lifeboat station, where you can see recorded on the walls all the times they boat has been let down the slipway to go and aid a craft stuck in The Wash.  There's less now than there used to be, with sea transport less necessary and better technology and safety precautions, but they still get sent out.  You can see the ramp for the boat in the photo below.  It's pretty steep!



We relaxed on the beach for a while (I paddled.  I always paddle.  I always paddle too deep and get splashed too.  More often than not I end up swimming!) watching surfing lessons, eating chips, and talking about life.  One of the nice things about walking with my Mum is that even though we get on so well anyway, spending so long on the march with another person seems to tune you into each other a little more than usual.  You see them honestly, at their sweaty, tired, generous, persevering extremes, and appreciate just how good it is to have their friendly company ambling along beside you.  Like sitting in front of a wood fire at night, walking together somehow allows you to talk about things you wouldn't have said otherwise, and she happens to give very good advice.  I think that's one of the things I enjoy most about our walks together.

Now, where shall we go next?