17 May 2016 - Norwich Club Site, Norfolk

Travel plans for us revolve to some extent around the weather, although sometimes time constraints will rule. With three full days to spend exploring from this base, we chose to spend today on a tikki tour away from the city. Yesterday as we came north, we had detoured in to check out Southwald, today our plan was to explore those seaside addresses to the north.

We were away from the Norwich traffic soon after 9 am, and travelled south to Bungay on the B1332, a B route superior to the A 145 travelled yesterday and probably the scene of our first scrape. At Bungay we cut across to the coast on an even smaller route, through rural Henstead, emerging just south of Kessingland, our first destination.

It was here that Chris set up his first ever caravan at the tender age of about twenty. It had apparently been an elderly relative’s dwelling, one who nearly smoked himself to death, or certainly into antiquity, and thus required much renovation. He had it towed across the county to Kessingland, with the intention of hiring it out from time to time, and to provide him with a refuge from family scrutiny when required. But it was not too long after that he decided to immigrate to Australia and the sale was left to his family to complete on his behalf. Ownership changed but the funds were lost in the melting pot of whanau; most importantly the memories of those times remain and make for tales to tell nearly fifty years later.

We drove about Kessingland Beach and Kessingland, and areas that might by some stretch of the imagination be considered such, but no place looked familiar and he was left to doubt the story. This evening he learned from his brother, whose memory of local matters is greater than  his,  that we had in fact driven past the spot, now a Caravan Club site, but with all the roads rearranged, quite unidentifiable.

We continued north, passing Pakefield where John’s Mary has a static caravan which provides a refuge from the hustle and bustle of retirement for them most weekends. Pakefield runs into the southern stretches of Lowestoft, the second on our list for the day.

Lowestoft is divided by the River Waveney which is part of the water network making up the Norfolk Broads, although it does in fact lie in Suffolk. Fishing is the main industry and has been since the middle of the 1800s, although folk do come here to enjoy the sun and sand, and the half-hearted attempt at fun palace activities. Yet overshadowing the whole town is the port, and today, a drab day when we emerged from our vehicle, it was hard to see past the industrial face of the town.

We wandered briefly about the Southern Pier and the sheltered manmade port at the mouth of the river, before crossing over on the bridge and walking up through the town. I was surprised that there were so many pedestrians about, most seemed to be locals, tattooed young women pushing prams and even more older men and women on mobility scooters; it seemed to be a Wheels Day out.

We wandered up the historic  High Street toward the market place and popped into a second hand book shop, manned by an elderly book worm who struggled to find change for us when we purchased a couple of UK travel books. He told us he had a son in Brisbane, but did not think he was likely to go visit him any time soon; he had never been on a plane and thought that over seventy was probably a bit old to overcome a fear of flying. It seems he lives his adventurous life vicariously through the thousands of books on his shelves and the odd collection of customers who walk through his door.

We returned to the car park, ate our lunch out of the wind and then proceeded further north to Great Yarmouth.  One of our new books explains that this is the “golden fringe of the Norfolk Broads”, and perhaps it is, just as that further south. The River Yare flows out of the Breydon Water where it meets the River Bure and turns south, leaving a three mile long spit of sand between the river and the North Sea, and it is on that spit the seaside town of Great Yarmouth has grown. The town has been a significant port for more than 1,000 years. 

The old part of Great Yarmouth is linked to the mainland by the Haven Bridge, and it is on this southern section that one finds one of the finest waterfronts in England, with a mixture of building style, Tudor, Georgian and Victorian, that were once homes of rich merchants .  

We parked on the northern part of the town in the Sainsbury car park, and walked around the town, the impressive and significant retail areas crowded with weekday punters. Near the river we admired the 19^th century Gothic Town Hall, and called into the Elizabethan House Museum, administered by the National Trust and as such gratis on waving our membership cards.   

After spending time here, we found our way back through the Rows and came upon the Greyfriars Cloisters, the remains of a thirteenth century friary of Franciscan grey friars. These were converted through the centuries to be part of the Row houses, but World War II bombing revealed remnants of the original structures. This feature is adminstered by English Heritage and open at limited times. We settled for peering through the barricades.

Back at Sainsbury’s, we shopped to justify our cheek, then drove up and down the Marine Parade, a mile long strip of tacky amusement arcades, running between the two piers, Wellington and Britannia, each sporting theatres and all the trimmings that holidaying Brits seem to require. The Parade is wide, the crowds were far less than seen at Clacton-on-Sea, but then this was a Tuesday, not Sunday. 

Greyfriars Cloisters

The park opened in the early 1900s and has been operating ever since. The largest and most popular ride at the park is Roller Coast which was built there in 1932, something Chris remembers from his youth. Visitor numbers vary hugely when googled, apparently about five million  each year, having peaked at about nine million back in the 1970s. 

I was really glad we bothered to do the drive by and equally glad we did not subject ourselves to the hideousness of the place more intimately. This kind of thing just does not do it for me!

Wind Turbines  off Yarmouth

Driving up the coast a little further, we closed in on yet another cluster of wind turbines. Out at sea, the” closing in”  is hypothetical, but probably did not seem too much so to the locals when consents were sought.  This is the Scroby Sands Wind Farm which lies two and a half kilometres off the coast, commissioned in  2004. The thirty wind turbines located in water on the Scroby Sands sandbank, planted between thirteen and twenty metres deep, are able to produce enough electricity  to power 41,000 households.

Chris recalled lightships anchored on the sand bank to warn ships of the shallow waters plying the shipping passage known as the Yarmouth Road. I had no idea that such vessels had existed. They have long since gone.

Here the beach was more like that to be found in New Zealand; space to park one’s  vehicle beside the road, and sand dunes down to the sea. We stopped and descended the concrete stairs to the dunes, finding our way across tracks flattened by earlier walkers and clearly marked with litter; cigarette butts, lolly wrappers and dog crap tied tightly in little bags left for the dog-poo-collecting-fairies to collect. Along the water line were tidal lines of stones and seaweed, but not a shell in sight. 

We drove on to Caister-on-Sea and checked the almost deserted beach there; a narrow sandy strip left to nature. And then it was time to cut back across the county to Norwich, across the flat lands of Norfolk, through cropped farmland and over the network of waterways. Every now and again we would spot a tall sail creeping through a field, in reality moving up through the narrow waterways mostly hidden from the road.

The weather had improved, the sun more in evidence, but the forecast for tomorrow suggests that it would be a better day for indoor sightseeing.