The weather is pleasantly overcast, but my presumption (which proves false) is it will clear and get hot. Rounding the harbour, where four big fish (cod?) bask in the shallows in a place I had seen them last night, I head towards the beach along a long straight path with a muddy inlet and beached boats to my right. It may be Wells-next-the-Sea but it’s well over half a mile to get there. Near by the beach there is a huge vessel moored that looks partly like a dredger and partly like a road excavator. It’s being used to clear a channel to allow construction vessels out of the harbour to get to the Sheringham Shoal Offshore Wind Farm, which I have noticed from time to time, far, far out to sea, sails turning and glistening in the varying wind and light, like a mirage.
I stop to read the information board. I find it hard to imagine how the free energy eventually earned by such a project can repay the huge investment required to construct and maintain it, especially as the turbines are so far out to sea. Of course I am in no position to calculate this, but I wonder if, as with nuclear power projects before like Bradwell and Sizewell A down the coast, those involved in building these great projects are really interested in making that calculation, or indeed in the end if they even know how to make it. The assumption with wind farms is that unlike nuclear reactors they harness an eternal resource, but I should think in reality these wind farms must have a shelf life too, needing to be knocked down and replaced one day.
Just before the beach, signs pointing to the left are a bit unclear. I walk over the dune to find the beach, Wells’ famous beach huts (which trump in number and variety those seen in Sheringham) line up in front of an evergreen wood, and the flat sands of the huge beach stretch out at low tide. I ask an elderly lady with a dog where the coastal path is, and she suggests if I’m going west just to walk across the beach towards Holkham. This sounds good advice, and I make for where the sand is wetter and firmer underfoot, and strike forward through a few early morning dog walkers, with the beach huts and pine trees to my left, and the shore still far out to the right. With the weather still overcast and the sands offering a likely shortcut, my confidence rises that today’s stage will be easily achieved. After a while I find myself the only walker out. A distant crouching black figure standing oddly on the edge of the shoreline proves to be a cormorant, wings half extended like a bat. A primeval predator pondering a paddle? As I get nearer it lifts itself off the ground and flies low along the shore, before rising and wheeling inland.
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| Holkham Beach |
Two swimmers emerge and I ask the ladies for directions. Holkham is already passed, but I can get back on to the path about three quarters of the way along the dunes as we look at them. Further up, the next man I see says there’s a path through the dunes a quarter of a mile along, marked with a sign. Trouble is, on the open flat sand it is hard to know how far you have been and how far you have to go. I don’t want to walk near the dunes because the soft dry sand is hopeless for walking under a heavy pack, so I walk further out on the firm sand, where spotting the path is more difficult. A couple of red billed oystercatchers forage on the sand, systematically walking away from me as I walk towards them. Eventually I come to a fenced off bit of beach where a bird watcher tells me I’ve overshot by half a mile. It’s a dead end in front but I can walk across the dunes to a boardwalk path.
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| Towards Burnham Staithe |
I walk across the grassy, mossy top of the dunes (peppered with millions of rabbit droppings) till I hit the board leading to a path going inland. Looking quickly around, panic stricken rabbits dash for their holes. Ahead, as I walk along a gravelly sea wall, surrounded by salt marsh, my destination marked by a windmill, lies Burnham Staithe. The approach reminds me of the one to Cley – sea wall, saltmarshes, windmill and all. Delightful as it is the North Norfolk Coastal Path is not one of constant novelty.
Burnham Overy Staithe is one of 6 Burnhams in the area, the others being: Burnham Overy Town, Burnham Thorpe (Nelson’s birthplace), Burnham Market, Burnham Norton, and Burnham Deepdale. Staithe is an old Middle English word for loading wharf. The town thrived from the middle ages onward as a small port serving the local area, but like neighbouring places now struggles to hang on to a route to the sea. It claims to be where young Horace Nelson (later to be better known by his full name Horatio) is likely to have had his first taste of sailing. After walking right through the village, I find that the chandlery on the harbour that I had walked past is the place for teas and coffee, and I go back to rest up and eat my pork pie, while kids with posh parents play on the quay. Half way into my pie the Northern Lass strides up out of right field. Clearly my short cut across the sands hasn’t stopped her from catching me up, despite a head start. We share a bench and a bit of a chat, then I let her go on ahead while I get a second cup of tea. With the day still overcast and half today’s route already completed I know I am going to make this stage of the walk with ease.
The path continues along the road out of the village and then turns off to the right near the windmill across a field where cabbage white butterflies riot over a failing crop of lettuce. Then it’s up onto another sea defence wall that heads out seawards over channels and sluices and then bends to the left between pasture (inland) and a narrow stretch of mud and water before dunes to the coastward side. There are a few walkers about and I ask a couple of them to take my picture; always a good ruse to get a bit of chat going. Most prove to be campers at the Deepdale site I’m heading for. The path, lined with long grass and wild plants and flowers, goes on straight for a mile or so. The weather is set pleasant warm and overcast for the day, and I slacken my step a little, stopping twice, to take it all in. Eventually the path turns inland towards trees and houses and ends by a beached narrow boat that sits on the edge of the vast salt marshes of the Manor of Brancaster. Down a road and through some trees I find myself at my campsite, and it’s only two o’clock.
The Deepdale campsite is located behind a newly built precinct of small shops, a café, a Costcutter mini-supermarket and a Murco (who?) petrol station. It’s part of a complex that includes hostel accommodation, an information centre, and a fully working farm. A wall boasts various award plaques for Deepdale Farms, including an “Investors in People” award, the scheme supported by the government to promote good employment practices. It certainly seems a popular place to work; numerous young Deepdale employees are about, all wearing their light blue Deepdale polo shirts, and I’m amused to see they are not appearing to be overly exerting themselves. Maybe it is the time of day. One ineffectively shoos a swallow from under a semi enclosed roof, another two idle and canoodle by the laundry, where my clothes are getting a desperately needed wash. To be fair to the staff, my numerous visits to the information centre near where I’m pitched are unerringly dealt with helpfully and patiently, as I return repeatedly, Colombo like, with additional requests for information and help, planning now my next moves and eventual journey home. Liking the place well enough I decide to book my pitch for another night, leaving me one long walk to complete the coastal path at Hunstanton on Thursday.
I laze away the afternoon on the mat outside my tent, feasting on raspberries, bananas, cream, beer and the last of my samphire. The man in the big blue tent to my right, camping with his wife and their dog, comes over and chats to me at length. Ray’s his name, and he comments on the smallness of my tent and wonders how the young French couple camping to my left manage to squeeze into their own small shelter. I say I reckon that they manage well enough. Clearly this tanned, attractive pair is drawing the attention of fellow campers, and eyebrows are raised when they form themselves into difficult looking tantric yoga formations for implausibly long periods out on the grass, demonstrating their ability to squeeze into unlikely positions together.
A bit woozy from two bottles of ale already drunk, I wander to the White Horse Inn where as expected I again run into Ray and Mrs Ray who had left a while ago to go and eat there. Ray insists on getting me a drink even though Mrs Ray says they can’t stay for another “because of the dog”. The Brancaster Best is mighty fine, and when they’ve gone I take it to the veranda at the back and watch the sun going down over the saltmarshes.
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| Burnham Deepdale - 9 pm |
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