O still small voice of calm.....

The Narrow Road to Deepest Norfolk

A squadron of geese flies under the radar....  It wakes my wanderlust.....

Breathe through the heats of our desire
thy coolness and thy balm;
let sense be dumb, let flesh retire;
speak through the earthquake, wind, and fire,
O still, small voice of calm!

 

John Greenleaf Whittier

 

 

From our current home to where we are going to be living at the end of January, much of the journey follows the A10, a narrow route to the north. Shrouded in the mists of Cambridgeshire we pause at Ely, on the way, an aspiring island rising from the swampy realm of Hereward the Wake, a kind of pre Brexiteer in reverse, as he resisted the Norman invasion....

How times change....  This celestial lantern is not lit by smoky reeds.....

Every day is a journey, and the journey itself is home

 

Matsuo Basho

The Narrow Road to the Deep North

Yes, home is where the heart aches....  And, to take our minds off the miseries of modern times, we have decided to go back in time, to upsize, to live it large.... We are moving house and home, cat and all....

As some will know, Amanda is a victim of Frontotemporal Dementia (semantic variant) and last summer I made the executive decision that we needed to have room to comfortably accommodate residential carers, and for our daughters to stay and help with her care without us all tripping over each other.  This meant moving further from the London region, and, for various reasons, I found what I was looking for in Norfolk, not far from King's Lynn.

There was something appealing about this property, once the village bakery, with its locally quarried Carr stone facade, and sufficient space to park an horse and cart.... So, after several months of indecision, complications with surveyors and builders, the arcane ways of solicitors and the difficulties of Covid, we now find that we have exchanged contracts and are committed to move....

The locals seem tranquil.... (when they're not whooping that is....)

There is a gentle air about the place which makes me think that my increasingly cantankerous nature may be calmed here....

(Non, I have no egrets....)

 

Sitting quietly, doing nothing, Spring comes, and the grass grows, by itself.

Matsuo Basho

 

 

The local residents come in all shapes and sizes.  A senior doctor in the surgery just down the road is also the Queen's personal physician.  While another old fellow regularly takes the waters at nearby Blakeney Point.....

In fact, as our deal is sealed, other seals deal with the sea.... (please don't look at me like that....)

While others bathe in the shingles of time (which can be irritating)....

And yet others display what looks suspiciously like post-natal depression (if you can pardon the anthropomorphism.....)  

Or is it just that it is Sunday afternoon and the kids won't let you sleep?

Whale.... it takes all sorts, and you can't win everything all the time....

Winter solitude-
in a world of one colour
the sound of the wind.

Basho Matsuo

 

 

It's a wintry kind of landscape, brushed by cold winds from the far north, shrouded by frets and fogs and muddy airs....

There is nothing you can see that is not a flower; there is nothing you can think that is not the moon.

Matsuo Basho

But I think we may find peace here.  I hope so.  The skies are immense,

And the village glows with a kind of subtle Christmas cheer that gives me hope that, on balance, the years to come may not all entirely be a waste of breath.....

We are now committed to move in a month.  I will let friends know the address when it is all over.....

Norfolk

Blakeney and the Norfolk Coast Path

It is exactly 100 years since the National Trust acquired Blakeney Point and established Norfolk’s first nature reserve. This Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty has something for everyone.

Peter expertly pilots his clinker-built craft close to the shore of Blakeney Point. Young pups swim around us, watching us with their deep eyes, while their parents laze on the sand, smiling for the cameras. A little way away a gang of teenage seals, common and grey, hang out by the water’s edge, as teenagers do. Peter, born and bred in Blakeney, points out courting Sandwich Terns, and Little Terns that plunge from flight to catch sand eels.

Seal-spotting and bird watching are two of the great attractions in this National Nature Reserve, which celebrates its hundredth anniversary with the “Tidal Lands” exhibition in Blakeney Village Hall from August 18th this year. The Reserve, managed by the National Trust, covers some 1000 hectares including the four mile long shingle spit of Blakeney Point, freshwater marshes by the river Glaven near the village of Cley, and saltmarshes carpeted with common seablite, samphire and sea lavender. There are also extensive mudflats at low tide and dunes held together by marram grass, where colonies of Terns nest and Oyster Catchers, Ringed Plovers and Redshanks strut to feed.

Along the Norfolk Coastal Path, which runs through Blakeney for forty-six miles from Hunstanton to Cromer, Linnets and Yellowhammers frequent the gorse, and Skylarks fly high above the grasses. Flocks of Brent Geese winter here, and Cormorants can be seen fishing in the tidal creeks.

Although Blakeney’s heyday was in the seventeenth century, when it rivalled King’s Lynn as a port, it was still a busy harbour until a hundred years ago. A Lifeboat Station was built on the point in 1898, but it was decommissioned in 1935 when silting and longshore drift finally put an end to its viability. The building now houses the National Trust information centre and provides accommodation for the wardens. At high tide it is a laborious walk to the point on the shingle, but at low tide vast areas of hard sand are exposed and in fine weather you can imagine you are Robinson Crusoe on a deserted coast.

Blakeney is home to about eight hundred people, though that number must double in the summer and probably quadruples on a sunny day, when children splash in the creek or fish for crabs from the quay. There are two major hotels and two pubs, the Kings Arms, a traditional inn with showbiz connections through hostess Marjorie Davies and her late husband Howard, and the White Horse, where Francis and Sarah Guildea have introduced a twenty-first century touch to local ingredients.

Although walking is a great way to see the area, the Coasthopper bus service can take the pain out of the return journey, with services every half an hour in summer between Wells and Cromer. However the easiest way to admire the coast is from a boat. Look out for Peter from Bishop’s Boats; he will introduce you to this spectacular world!

http://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/blakeney/things-to-see-and-do/events/