Author: Back on the Road Again Blog

It isn’t surprising that I like guidebooks. On our trip around Suffolk and Norfolk we had the pleasure of being accompanied by a pair of tattered 1940s Penguin guides. These dated companions steered us through East Anglia, pointing out the must-see sights of 80 years ago. So much has changed since the post-war period I felt like a time traveller but when we pulled up at Burgh Castle I was also confused as this featured in our Suffolk guidebook but is now in Norfolk.

Whichever county it is in, the scale of the Roman ruins at Burgh Castle are the big story. The rough stone walls and round corner tower soar to over 4m high and I wondered why this building hasn’t been on my wish list for some years. It was only chance that I had chosen it from the out-of-date guidebook. And it is free to visit! I have paid £££s to visit Roman ruins that are pretty much just an ankle-height floor plan in stone, Burgh Castle has scale and presence.

After wandering around the large site I walked down to the banks of the nearby River Yare. The East Anglian coastline has changed in the last 2,000 years and the ruins would originally have guarded a ‘Great Estuary’ that flowed over the rooftops of Great Yarmouth. In those days ships would have docked below the castle.

According to our 1940s guide Great Yarmouth, ‘is sometimes called the Venice of East Anglia.’ I don’t know if anyone still makes that particular comparison! The short stretch of town walls are a reminder of an older Great Yarmouth but I was more interested in the modern Banksy painted on a brick gable end. The artist has cleverly positioned a couple so that they appear to be dancing on the roof of an adjacent bus shelter while an accordion player sits casually on the corner. Later we walked along the prom and gave ourselves a sugar rush with donuts and ice-cream.

We have visited some of the Norfolk coast before but the Norfolk Broads were new territory. From the Caravan and Motorhome Club site we caught the bus to Wroxham and Hoveton on a drizzly day. These two villages merge around a bridge over the River Bure that funnels the never-ending stream of trafic. Cars were less in your face in the 1940s but the local institution, Roys, was already here. Known as the biggest village shop, there are actually many shops; a Roys department store; a food hall; a garden centre and a DIY shop; this isn’t quite a one-shop village but they give it a good try.

Despite the abundant motorcars, the villages are dedicated to boating. This is the place to hire boats, visit boat yards and do other boating things. On the bus we fell into conversation with a man who described himself as a ‘water gypsy.’ No one else would talk to him so he told us he had received no schooling from nine years old, his mum had studied psychology at Hull University and he described his life on the move from 24-hour mooring to 24-hour mooring.

From the campsite we walked along a grassy dike that meandered through reed beds, the chugging of boats on the River Ant in the distance.  A marsh harrier flew by, a fish dropped from the talons of a herring gull and was lost in the reeds and a flock of teal rose from a pool in a shudder of wing beats and circled overhead.  Approaching a windmill, cormorants perched along the wooden sails, their wings spread out to catch the weak September sun. 

I was keen to experience the watery nature of the broads and we were booked on the morning electric boat trip from Toad Hole Cottage. Waiting for our guide we sat drinking coffee on a bench, lazily watching a sailor polishing the already gleaming wood on a handsome wooden wherry.

It turned out we were the only people who wanted to explore the Broads in a quiet electric boat that morning and we had the luxury of spreading out on the small craft. After a short distance on the main river we turned left into a channel where the reeds leaned in against the boat.  As the thrum of the river boats melted away I found myself in the backwater world of Swallows and Amazons.

Later we had our lunch in a hide, thrilled to see a kingfisher fly back and forth.  We explored How Hill House’s verdant and dripping secret garden before taking the paths to the village of Ludham and joining the river again by the ruins of St Benet’s Abbey.

In Cromer I led Anthony along the beach to find another Banksy on the sea wall. ‘Luxury Rentals Only,’ a comment on our broken housing market, is out in all weathers and fading. I liked Cromer with its prom and pier, its beach dotted with colourful pebbles and tall breakwaters crossed by metal steps dripping with black seaweed. Our 1940s guidebook ignores the pier but was right about the ‘excellent beach.’ 

Another showery September day was ideal for taking the train to Norwich. Here we visited the cathedral and I walked round and round the font that is made from two polished copper bowls. These were given to the Cathedral when the Rowntree Mackintosh Norwich chocolate factory closed in 1994.  Colourful modern stained glass gave a vibrant glow to otherwise gloomy corners of the cathedral and the cloisters radiated peace and light.  We did wander some of Norwich’s pretty streets but, as the rain got heavier, we lost the desire to explore and probably didn’t do it justice.

Sitting outside at the Priory Maze café near Sheringham the waitress moved between the tables gathering up all the sachets of mayonnaise.  ‘The rooks take them away and eat the contents,’ she told us, leaving the salad cream which apparently is less appealing to these connoisseur rooks! From the campsite we had hiked to the top of Norfolk (if there is a hill we will find it). Cromer Ridge is just inland and reaches the dizzy heights of 102m so it wasn’t a tough ascent!  Our route passed a village green with a pebble-built house before climbing through woodland where we stepped carefully over tree roots.  We descended through heathland and skirted the fields of a horse sanctuary before reaching Priory Maze and Gardens.

Copper beech and hornbeam have been planted using the layout of the ruined priory as the basis for the maze.  We began in a disciplined way, alternating who chose which direction to turn to find a way to the centre. Very soon we were lost and our choices became random and haphazard and it was only luck that eventually led us to the central viewing platform.

The maze and gardens were fun but couldn’t beat the walk along the beach from Sheringham to East Runton. The soft sandy cliffs that are basically a giant sandcastle erode easily and attempts have been made to protect these from the sea. The futile remains of wooden revetments littered the beach and we wound our way around vertical posts and under buttresses of grey weathered wood studded with rust-red nails.

I had been looking forward to Blakeney Point and it was a memorable day but not for the reasons I was expecting. Our Penguin guide noted that this four-mile long shingle ridge backed with salt marshes was given to the National Trust in 1912. We parked at Cley Beach and turning to make coffee in the back of the ‘van I was floored by a hot pain that shot from my spine to the back of my legs. I assumed it would wear off and, after drinks, carefully put on my waterproofs.

The squally wind and the deep pebbles along the ridge made walking agony and I shuffled down the slope to meander on the sand by the crashing waves, where the going was a little easier. At the old Watch House or Halfway House we scrambled back to the shingle bank to look over the salt marshes and the remote building. Exhausted, I sat down and as we ate our picnic lunch we made the decision to head back. Walking was easier with a tailwind.  We collected a few bits of litter and admired some of the multitude of shells.  Seals popped their heads above the waves and a group of Brent geese flapped low over the sea. 

Dosed up on ibuprofen I could manage to walk around Wells-next-the-Sea for the next couple of days. The sun returned and watching it set from the beach was as idyllic as I could have hoped. Waking up to the joyful honking of geese as they flew over our campervan was special too. Our 1940s guide doesn’t mention the beach huts that are now a Wells-next-the-Sea icon and also doesn’t firmly place the town on the coast, it is just called Wells.

Striding out to Holkham Hall it seemed that I was okay walking upright. I just needed to avoid bending, easier said than done in a small campervan!    Our guidebook told us that visitors were welcomed at Holkham Hall 80 years ago and they still are. We took paths and tracks around the house and through the estate and ate our lunch on a bench overlooking Well’s harbour.  Our guide told us that in 1940s Wells ‘… you will find no piers or funfairs …’ but ’if you are in search of ‘local colour’ drop in at the Shipwrights’ Arms one evening.’  Unfortunately, this pub is now closed so we sought out local colour in the many quaint corners.

Opening the blinds on our final day in Norfolk it was a pleasure to see blue sky. We arrived at Titchwell RSPB reserve as the staff were holding an outdoor team meeting and we spent a fabulous hour walking by the pools to the dunes and the sandy beach.  The blue sea met the blue sky on the horizon and the space felt phenomenal. 

By the time we reached Castle Rising the weather had changed to misty and chilly autumnal weather.  The castle has a circular ditch or moat to cross to the gatehouse and a well-preserved stone keep. We climbed up to the different floors finding details that have survived the centuries. 

After sitting for even an hour in the ‘van I would unravel myself from the seat in a shambles of bent and staggering bones. This acute pain lasted just a short time and once everything had loosened up I could stand and walk normally. I was grateful we weren’t making the long journey back to Lancashire in one run and had Derbyshire friends to stay with on the way.

The Suffolk half of our trip is in a previous post.

Footnote on the pain I was experiencing. This became sciatic pain in my right leg. I had lots of physio through October and November 2022 and eventually visited my GP and started taking amitriptyline which meant I could sleep peacefully all night. By January 2023 I was more or less pain free.

Where we stayed

We used two Caravan and Motorhome Club Sites, Norfolk Broads and Seacroft near Cromer. We liked the former, it was a well-run site with a bus service into Norwich and a walk along the River Ant and to St Benet’s Abbey from the site. Seacroft is an excellent location for Cromer and Sheringham but is in need of an upgrade.

We also stayed at Pinewoods at Wells-next-the-Sea, an expensive site with a fantastic location. For the money I would have liked heating in the facilities at the end of September but our pitch in the reeds was heavenly.

Shingle beaches that stretch to the horizon, coastal villages packed with cottages and ancient flint churches were what drew me to Suffolk. This was our first visit to this county and I was delighted to find all these things and more on our autumn trip. We rolled into Suffolk at Bury St Edmunds in our Blue Bus and stayed firstly near Ipswich before following the coast eastward.

Beaches

In the couple of weeks we were in Suffolk we walked miles along shingle beaches deep with pebbles and soon learnt how tiring wading through this is. We also found sandy beaches that were made for buckets and spades. In Orford we took the boat to Orford Ness and were spell-bound by the combination of post-war military structures and hardy plants. You couldn’t miss the power of nature. Between Minsmere and Dunwich seal pups sat in the surf as we meandered between the clumps of sea kale that breaks up the shingle and climbed up to the heath-covered cliffs.

In Southwold we kicked along the soft sand below rows of colourful beach huts, each one individually decorated, and stood under the pier watching the tide crashing against the complicated lattice of pier struts. Later we sampled a glass of Adnams, the local beer, in a pub off the seafront.

Villages

While Thorpeness seems hardly real with its holiday villas that are straight from Disney, the weatherboard houses of Aldeburgh felt real and charming. The brick and stone Martello Tower is solid and dense in comparison to the village. This is now a Landmark Trust property you can rent and what a treat it would be to stay there. If you’re interested in unusual places to stay in, the famous House in the Clouds old watertower in Thorpeness is also available as a holiday rent.

At Aldeburgh we gazed across the sea, guessing there was nothing between us and the Netherlands.  From the edge of the village, the dyke path took us on a lovely green route around Aldeburgh passing productive allotments. Leaving the houses we picked up a path through a nature reserve where trees arched above the sandy path, sunshine dappled through the foliage and blackberries glistened by the path and we picked ripe ones as we walked.   

Lavenham is hard to beat in the charming village awards. Over 300 buildings are listed in this well-preserved medieval village that was once a wealthy wool town and walking the narrow streets and lanes to the market place is like undertaking a crash course in timber-framed building designs.

Towns & Cities

We were initiated into the sights of Suffolk in Bury St Edmunds and it was the perfect introduction to the county for two Suffolk newbies. We began in the park of this small town, wandering around the abbey ruins to the monumental and richly-decorated stone gatehouse. Later we visited the cathedral, spent a fascinating hour or so in the Moyse’s Hall Museum and finished off our trip in a sunny square with coffee and cake.

From our campsite near Ipwich we visited Ipwich and Felixstowe. The bus to Felixstowe took the slow road and we sat on the top deck until the end of the line at Landguard Fort.  You can visit the fort but we were keen to walk and after watching the huge cranes picking up the containers and placing them on the ship like a giant tetras game we set off along the seafront.  The sea defences were easy to follow back to Felixstowe with views to the pier and more ships out at sea.

In Ipswich we began with the waterfront, a marina surrounded by old warehouses, the Custom’s House and some shiny new buildings.  We had coffee and watched students learning filming techniques with the boats as a backdrop. We wandered through the city centre, passing all the shops you would expect, to Christchurch Park, a large green space with grass, woodland and a pond. Christchurch Mansion is a free museum with a collection of paintings from local artists Constable and Gainsborough.

In Lowestoft we found our way around a sprawling Bird’s Eye factory, no doubt pumping out boxes and boxes of fish fingers, to find England’s most easterly point.  I expected a bit more of an attraction here but the orientation circle in the concrete promenade was informative. Checking out the distances we realised we were closer to mainland Europe than we were to Lancashire! Walking along the promenade we could see a lower prom had been washed away by the sea, so I guess Europe is getting further away. Inland we climbed one of Lowestoft’s scores, narrow steep alleys, to the High Street, an old shopping street with some historic buildings and quirky shops

Sitting by the River Waveney between Beccles and Lowestoft a kingfisher flew low over the water and minutes later a swan landed perfectly in front of us and harrumphed occasionally and gently until its partner negotiated an equally skilful landing and they slipped away together.  A buzzard emerged from the trees opposite, circled the field and flew away as a group of geese passed overhead.  Beside us were bushes decorated with bright-green hop fruits that look too exotic to be British. We had caught the bus to Beccles and after coffee and cake in a cosy but wildly expensive café we followed the Angles Path along the Waveney, a watery highway busy with boats but few other walkers.  The weather was quiet, with no wind and the cloud hung in the sky like a billowing duvet. In the wet meadows alongside the river we spotted plenty of Chinese water deer with their teddy bear ears and strange hare-like run.  

Churches & Abbeys

I had read about Blythburgh Church but that didn’t prepare me for the loveliness of this medieval church.  The exterior flint has been worked and arranged to look like chequer-board tiling.  Inside the wonky tiled floor held stories from thousands of feet and I stepped up to the high medieval font.  We had come to see the painted angels on the wooden ceiling who peered down on mortals in the nave, their magnificent wings outstretched.  While I admired the carved wooden pew ends, Anthony found an information panel about JF Kennedy’s brother, Joe, who died in a Second World War plane explosion nearby. 

Leiston Abbey, a ruined abbey not far from Sizewell, today suffers from metal-fence-itis. Ugly temporary fencing circled every part of the ruins that presumably are unsafe.  Nevertheless, beyond the fencing we could appreciate the structures, the 14th century arches and windows and the cloisters that retained their sense of peaceful space.

In Pakefield on the edge of Lowestoft, we walked around All Saints and St Margaret’s Church on the seafront. Technically two churches built next to each other, you will notice the tower is attached to one half of the M-shaped roof. These churches were once some distance inland but coastal erosion has led to the loss of many houses here as the sea has nibbled at the land. In the Second World War the buildings took a direct hit and were rebuilt.

Southwold‘s parish church was another church we took the time to visit. This church is fascinating for its Jack. This is a wooden statue dressed in armour, and holds a sword and an axe, which can be used to ring the bell at the start of a service. The Jack has been in the church since the 15th century and it is thought it was originally made to strike the hour for a clock and was repurposed.

Byways

Off the main roads, Suffolk seemed to be characterised by narrow lanes, plenty of them going nowhere but to a small coastal village. We took the Blue Bus to the end of the road at Orford and caught the National Trust boat to Orford Ness (see above). Driving to the RSPB reserve at Minsmere the lanes became narrow and then even narrower as we got closer to the sea. The lanes wound around fields and woodland until I had no idea which way was north and whether we were heading in the right direction or not. The only thing you can do is trust the RSPB signs! After our walk we had to follow the same byways in the opposite direction.

Sizewell was an exception. We immediately noticed what a good road it was to Sizewell, presumably for the traffic to the nuclear power station.

Where we stayed

We stayed at some Caravan and Motorhome Club sites on the way down [Grafham Water] for one night and at White House Beach which was handy for Lowestoft. These were both the usual standard.

For Ipswich we stayed at Little Sage Hill, Copenhagen Cottage Caravan and Camping Club Certified Site. I reviewed this site here.

Beach View Holiday Park at Sizewell is a large independent site that was okay for a couple of night and was well situated for walks to Thorpeness and Aldeburgh.

One of us in our house [and its not me] has completed his Wainwright fells! Although we have been walking up Lake District hills together since the 1980s, he didn’t start determinedly ticking off his 214 Lake District Wainwrights until 1998. It was one of those significant birthdays that inspired him to begin and the team [in the photograph above] climbed the Old Man of Coniston to celebrate his 40th birthday, marking the beginning of his Wainwright journey.

The Old Man of Coniston was a strange hill to choose in some way as it was one we had already climbed together twice over the previous 15 years. It was, of course, because of the name and now it is our most climbed Wainwright as we go back every ten years on my partner’s significant birthdays and follow one of the many routes up this much-loved mountain. His birthday is at the end of winter and although we were lucky to have fine weather when he was 40, the photograph of the small select group of us on the summit when he was 50 shows a different side of the mountain. Only our son and daughter-in-law and our toughest friends wanted to climb the Old Man on a cold damp day and looking at the photographs you can hardly make out any of us for the low cloud and layers of waterproofs! For his 60th we decided to be sociable and moved his birthday hill walk to June and we were rewarded with a fine sunny day with a bevy of friends.

Unless you are a very organised Wainwright Bagger, as you get to the end of your Wainwright list you will have random hills dotted around the Lake District to walk up [or maybe this is just us]. Our visits to the Lake District became dominated by walks up these outlying fells and others that we had somehow missed on previous trips. Our climbs up, down and around the Wainwrights have perhaps sometimes missed the obvious and most efficient routes and I can often be heard saying, ‘Why didn’t we walk up this hill when we were there,’ as I point to the next pimple along the ridge. This habit of almost climbing the Wainwrights one at a time will be why we have also walked up and down Fairfield more times than I can count. As well as being a fine hill, Fairfield [above Ambleside] is often on the way to another summit. Keen Wainwright Baggers will complete the handful of fells around Fairfield in one long and tiring day. We go up and down again and again! Fortunately, it doesn’t matter how many times we visit I will never tire of the Lake District fells.

Those energetic hill walkers will probably climb two fells, Hopegill Head and Whiteside above Crummock Water during the same day as they are bagging Grasmoor and maybe some other surrounding hills. For whatever reason we hadn’t done this. It might be laziness but no matter, it just means that we had another glorious day walking in this area that was particularly special after several days of heavy rain.

We have set off up the small hill called Outerside above Braithwaite previously. On that day, a couple of winters ago the slight breeze in the valley became a gale force wind that made standing up almost impossible as we ascended and we were forced onto a low-level walk instead. Our second attempt at Outerside was on a sunny autumnal day and we enjoyed a relative easy day on the hills which was appreciated after the steep slopes of Hopegill Head and Whiteside the day before. Outerside was his 208th [out of 214] Wainwright.

On the same trip we also climbed up Haystacks from Buttermere for a second or third time. Haystacks is one of those fells I imagine we will climb again and again now his Wainwright list is complete and doesn’t dictate where we go as, even on a wet day, I was pleased to revisit this wonderful craggy hill.

Two years ago we set off up Froswick, an odd hill on a ridge that was still unticked. It was winter and Froswick had other ideas and in deep snow and strong winds we had to turn back. We finally ascended this fine hill in January this year. It was still cold, I was still wearing as many layers as a human can but the wind stayed away and we had a glorious day out [see the photograph at the end of this post].

His big finish was a fantastic hillwalking day on two neighbouring fells in western Ennerdale, Great Bourne and Starling Dodd.  Starling Dodd was Wainwright’s last fell for the final volume of the Pictorial Guides to the Lakeland Fells. He descended it in September 1965 with mixed emotions. That this was my partners final Wainwright on his list wasn’t planned but it felt so right. It was a clear and breezy day but there was no fanfare on Starling Dodd just big smiles. We had views across the Lake District and we reminisced about some of our favourite days on the hills. We hugged each other, took photos and texted our son. Walking back through the woodland by Ennerdale the sun came out and made the day even more perfect.

It seems our Wainwright Bagging days won’t quite be over after that final hill-top Wainwright-completion-bash. Since retirement we have climbed the Wainwrights together but before 2017 there were quite a few of the fells that I dodged, either because I had work commitments or just couldn’t be bothered to detour to. These 20 Wainwrights have now become a list and apparently our Lake District hillwalking will continue to be at least in part dictated by Alfred Wainwright until they have all been completed! Onward and upward as they say!

Earwigging we call it and I am always doing it. It is nothing to do with creepy crawlies, instead it is our word for harmless overhearing of other people’s conversations. On buses and trains and walking in the countryside and urban areas I sometimes listen in, a harmless vice that gives me pleasure. I enjoy the snippets of people’s lives that I hear and the insight into other worlds this can gift me.

Passing groups on a footpath when we are taking a countryside walk I will pick up only a sentence or two of a whole conversation. Two people approach deep in conversation and I overhear one exclaim to their friend, ‘ … And then to cap it all I found out he had forgotten to buy the toothpaste …’ From those few words I continue on my way making up a whole story in my head about what else had been forgotten, why he forgot to buy the toothpaste and why it mattered quite so much.

On public transport earwigging is different. Here some people speak loudly and clearly even though they are sitting together, they share longer conversations and I find myself getting sucked into their story. I often take a book to read on a train but if a real-life story is being unfolded on a nearby seat I discard my novel for something more interesting! People also speak loudly on their mobile phones on public transport and I get caught up in their half of the conversation and imagine the person they are talking to, where they are and what they are saying.

We have just returned from a splendid three weeks exploring Suffolk [a new to us county] and Norfolk in our campervan. We used public transport to reach places beyond the campsites, we walked miles and sat in lots of cafes and I have returned with a few earwigged conversations from that trip.

It was a wet and windy day and we decided to take the train into Norwich to see the sights of this lovely city. The train was surprisingly quiet but a few seats behind us a young woman was chatting on her phone to someone. At first I was watching the Norfolk countryside and not really listening to her conversation until I heard her say, ‘OMG, you’ll never guess what’s happened.’ Immediately, I was all ears! She elaborated further to her friend, explaining that while she had been on the phone she had received a message from the bass player of her band and he had resigned. This was clearly unexpected news and inconvenient as they had a gig coming up in the next few days. I was disappointed when she got up to leave the train stopping me hearing more about how the band would cope without a crucial bassist.

On the same train there were two guards, which seemed a bit over-the-top for so few passengers but appeared to have something to do with re-training. After they had checked tickets, the two guards had plenty of time to sit and chat between stations and chose seats near us. They talked solely about trains! After one had put forward his personal plans for the Felixstowe line they began riffing and bouncing across the aisle all the problems that can delay a train and whose responsibility it was to sort it and pay compensation to passengers. Their list became darker as they delved deeper. ‘Leaves on the line, that’s Network Rail,’ one said, ‘And cows is them too,’ replied the other, until their list ended somberly with suicides and they sat in silence remembering.

In a Norwich cafe we sat at a table next to two women who were having a much needed catch up. One was describing in detail the stomach aches she had been experiencing for some months. ‘I thought it was a milk allergy,’ she explained but apparently substituting soya, oat and coconut milk made no difference. After excluding other things from her diet and trying various medications her doctor suggested she change her teabags, ‘As you know I drink gallons of tea,’ she confided to her friend. I was amazed to hear that the teabag change did the trick and she was cured.

In another cafe in Ipswich I gained an insight into the working life of a hazardous waste collector. While he waited for his takeaway coffee he described the irresponsible behaviour of some businesses to the cafe worker. He shared stories and photographs of unsecurely wrapped, unlabelled and unidentified materials that businesses leave, expecting him to remove them out of their way. I could only hope he was handsomely paid for his diligent work.

Other fleeting conversations are equally surprising but less about earwigging. We were sitting at the outside tables at a cafe attached to a garden in north Norfolk when the waitress appeared and began removing all the sachets of mayonnaise from the box on our table and all the other tables. ‘The rooks take these and eat the contents,’ she told us.  It seems Norfolk has clever gourmet rooks with a preference for mayonnaise as she was confident that they would leave the salad cream alone. 

I get words muddled up all the time and sometimes these muddled words are more fun than the real word. While washing up at a Suffolk campsite I was telling a fellow camper that we had walked the Angles Way [named after the post-Roman Germanic settlers in East Anglia] from Beccles to Lowestoft along the Waveney River. She told me how much she liked Beccles and that there were some good walks there. ‘I don’t know the Angles Way,’ she told me, ‘but we have followed the Angels Path.’ Now that sounds like a much more heavenly route!

Judge me if you wish for my earwigging but I suggest if you see me on a bus or when you are out for a walk just be careful about what you say!