Day 2: East Runton to Weybourne

Sleep in my coffin shaped tent is patchy, it‘s like the undertaker measured me up wrong. I am not a fussy camper and usually sleep like Homer Simpson as long as I’ve got something over the top of me and a dry arse. The problem is it’s just that bit too short; either my feet are rubbing at the end or my head is constricted at the top. In the end the semi-foetal position seems best, though this is tricky in a sleeping bag. At least the self inflating mat I have invested in works OK, and in the morning I find it makes a good makeshift windbreak for my camping gas stove, which is useless without it.


I am up at 7. It rained a bit in the night, and the forecast for today is rain on and off. I get myself a shower (excellent facilities in Woodhill Park - award winning!), make a brew, and then start the slow, incremental process of packing up the tent, clothes and kit. Of necessity camping makes you patient and methodical even if usually you are neither. There may even be a Zen like happiness to be had from the ritualistic performance of simple tasks carried out properly and in correct succession. Every item has to go into its correct place in the pack, or in an allocated place in the numerous pockets of my shorts, which I will begin wearing today.


After however long this all takes, I carefully back my arms into the straps of the rucksack, perform a gentle clean and jerk to take the weight on my back, and fasten the buckle at the front. Stepping forward to finally commence my walk, my satisfaction at a job well done is undermined as my shorts slide down my backside with each step I take, full as they are with wallet, phone, notebook, and numerous other bits and bobs I want to hand. A belt is clearly a serious omission from my list of “things to take to Norfolk”. Progress like this is hopeless, I realise. I can’t be hoiking my shorts up every six steps to Weybourne.


The solution is either to dismantle my pack to get to the cords I wore yesterday, or come up with some makeshift belt. Preferring the latter option I detach my tent from the loops at the bottom of my rucksack, unroll it, and detach one of the Day-Glo yellow guy ropes, which I then pass through the loops of my shorts, pull tight and fasten in a double knot at the front. Voila! This then, in combination with my light blue “Cotton Traders” fleece (a Christmas gift from my mum and dad that I had originally vowed never to wear until I realised its practical use for this trip) is both a practical success and a sartorial disaster. In this slightly hideous fashion I commence my walk. At least I am not wearing a bum-bag.


Spots of rain don’t come to much as I walk up the A149 again toward West Runton, heading for the path up the hill I found yesterday. The walk up is a lot heavier going this time, of course, with pack on back, but manageable enough. Reaching the path through the woods, signs warn you to reconsider entering on windy days, especially if you can see or hear branches “clashing together overhead”. All is quiet and I press on. At the top of Beacon Hill the Roman Camp (actually a lookout during the Napoleonic War) is marked by a National Trust sign and a flagpole. Having climbed Norfolk’s highest peak I can glimpse the sea through the trees in the distance.


Regular signs warn of the of the activity of adders in the area - creatures I have long hoped to get a sighting of in the wild. Further along a flat gravely plateau opens out; some fern, some gorse, some bare and parched. I walk across a way via a vague path and stop at a bench overlooking the trees and sea. With pack unloaded I wait for half an hour, take in the view and hope vainly for a viperous encounter.

Beacon Hill

Back on the path it’s an easy walk down through the woods and wild foxgloves. Lower down the woods open out on the right to view a goat farm and some fine looking stone cottages. The weather is an enormously kind mixture of warm sunshine, cloud and cooling showers. I cross a road (must be the A149 again) and rejoin the path that leads to a single rail level crossing after which I find myself in a magical little spot, part of the Beeston Regis Nature Trial, consisting of an open heath covered in long grass and wild plants and flowers, with the cliffs and a cliffy hillock (Beeston Bump) at the diagonal corner of the field. The sun is shining warmly now and as I walk the path to the cliff a cormorant flies in quite low from the sea and hovers where I can see it quite clearly, then goes inland. I walk up the path to the cliff edge marked by a little wooden fence at the end, then left along the cliff edge (with no fence) towards the Bump. Then it’s a little climb up the wooden stepped path through poppies to the top, marked by a concrete trig point, where the whole of the seaside town of Sheringham opens up in panorama.

Beeston Bump

From the top I spot the brick built St Josephs Catholic Church, designed by the renowned Giles Gilbert Scott, who designed Battersea Power Station and the red telephone box. It is too inland for me to bother with a closer look today. I make my way down the hill through ferns, flowers and “how d’you dos” with people coming up, and catch glimpses of the cliffs shearing away at points on the seaward side. Towards the bottom there’s a very well manicured putting green and I recall liking putting greens as a child (indeed this one stirs a faint recollection that I may have played here). Further down still is a robust stone stairway leading to a beach hut promenade. The preference for beach huts round here is for pastel and powder coloured huts with names like “Blossom Beach” and “Happy Daze”. They remind me of the icing sugar toned stucco fronts in Kelly Street, Kentish town, that some I know call “Cake Street”.


Hunger has planted the idea of a Cromer crab sandwich in my mind, and I find an excellent if pricy one at the Crown on the promenade, which I consume with the coolest, most refreshing pint of Adnams Broadside I’ve ever had. I wander into town to have a look around. Seasidy stuff like amusement arcades, chip shops and gift shops are easily mixed in with healthily busy small shops and businesses. Sheringham traders, with the support of most of the town, have stayed in business by fighting a 14 year long and so far successful battle against Tesco, who want to build a superstore nearby. They are still trying.

 I take a look in a couple of charity shops but can’t find a belt that is less hideous than my luminous guy rope. In the second shop an elderly gentleman sporting a slightly ludicrous ladies hat gives me directions to the tourist information office, where I think I might be able to get a more useful map. No such luck. I’m told “we been asking for one for some time”. All they have is the equivalent of the one I printed off the internet, so it’s onwards without.

Cliff tops by Sheringham Golf Course

It’s up along the westward promenade towards the rising cliffs, and when the promenade ends the path continues up the grassy topped cliff with Sheringham Golf Club on the left. Golf - “a good walk, spoiled”, or, perhaps “a good putting green, enlarged”. The furious fluttering of the golf pin flag indicates the strength of the wind coming from inland, and I err to the left side of the path away from the cliff edge as the sun gets stronger and the cliff get steeper. Finally at the top of the cliff I ease off my rucksack on a grassy bank by the Coastwatch Hut and stop to admire the dramatic view of the high sandy cliffs stretching out below and beyond for a mile or more, before the coastline levels out to the far horizon. After a few gulps of water, I set about walking the path that I can take in now at a single view, going across the ferny heath of Sheringham Park, and then to the village of Weybourne, where I’m stopping tonight.


For centuries Weybourne has been regarded as a likely foreign invasion point on account of the waters close to the shore that are deep and wide enough to anchor an armada. For this reason the ancient Anglo Saxon village had long been the home of a major armed camp. A corny old saying goes:

“She who would old England win

Must at Weybourne hope begin”

 

Foxhills, Weybourne

My campsite, Foxhills, is located at the edge of that military camp, which is now the Muckleburgh Collection, a no doubt impressive collection of tanks, armoured trucks and great big guns of all kinds. In contrast, Foxhills is a charming old campsite as near and yet far away from the brutal realities of war as Private Godfrey and his sister Dolly. It’s run by Mr and Mrs Wharton. Mr Wharton is a large, frail old gentleman who patrols his campsite on one of those mobility scooters (a common mode of transport in Weybourne). They live and work from a tumbledown wooden office cum bungalow, which sits in its own gated garden, with a dilapidated greenhouse and pot plants in the front (ostensibly) for sale. Folksy hand made signs are sprinkled about to tell you what to do and where things are. One says
“TEA ROOM CLOSED - BECAUSE OF STAFF”
with a rudimentary picture of Mr Wharton on his scooter in the middle, as if by way of explanation.

Mr Wharton cheerily takes my £9 to camp for the night, plus an addition 20p which is the cost of charging my phone, he then suggests where I am best off camping. Mrs Wharton does not appear.


I take a walk into the village to get a tin of soup for my tea. I’ve seen a few of these flint stone cottages along the way today but Weybourne is the flint city full Monty. Just about all the houses, old and new, are made with the stone traditionally plundered from the beach. I pop into the church of All Saints Weybourne, where the enthusiastic vicar, (or is he the rector? What’s the difference?) encourages me to admire the ruin of the Anglo Saxon priory and some choice 18th century tombstones.


I beat a quiet retreat to the Ship Inn while my guide attends to two ladies arriving at the church door on mobility scooters. Shaded from the evening sunshine on the porch of the pub, I particularly enjoy the local Royal Anglian ale from the Norfolk Wolf Brewery, named after the Norfolk based regiment now serving in Afghanistan. A percentage of the price of my pint goes to the Royal Anglian Regiment Benevolent Society. The beer is certainly most benevolent.