Great Yarmouth to Winterton-on-Sea 15th September 2020
Today is to be our first taste of Norfolk Public Transport, in fact any public transport in the Covid Era. The plan is to drive to Winterton, park the car and catch the 9.25am bus from Martham to Great Yarmouth. From Great Yarmouth we expect to have a serene walk back to Winterton along the Norfolk Coast Path – approx. 11 miles.
From our caravan base it will take 30 minutes to drive to Winterton. We have 40 minutes, which is a little tight considering we have to find a parking space at Winterton. We actually achieve it with 5 minutes to spare, finding ample space close to the bus stop.
Waiting at the bus stop
Not only do we catch the bus, but I get to travel free using my old fart’s bus pass. The down side is that Betty has gone the other way and turned into a child, insisting on riding on the top deck to enjoy the view. It is also the quickest way to get travel-sick as the bus lurches at every road junction and bus stop.
The other downside is that we have to share the top deck with college students, who don’t have to be at college in Great Yarmouth until after 10am. Some of them are not wearing masks and are being a bit stupid. I try not to play the teacher – I did that for far too many years – but Betty fixes them with a hard stare which turns them to stone (“don’t mess with The Hair Witch!”) To their credit most of the younger passengers are correctly attired and socially distant.
Having survived the bus ride I have to check the map and Mr Google to find our way to where we finished-up yesterday evening. I half expect some helpful citizen to offer directions, on seeing two lost souls with a map, but I imagine they get a lot of lost holiday-makers in Great Yarmouth and besides, for all they know we could be riddled with bugs.
Eventually we find our way out of the seething masses of miffed retired couples – forced to have a ‘staycation’ in Yarmouth in September, instead of their usual jaunt to Benidorm – and commence our navigation along the Norfolk Coast Path. Most of the Covid refugees here suffer from a common ailment amongst the old – Covid Chin. They take their face masks with them in case they have to enter a shop. On exiting the shop they pull it down under their chin because they can’t be bothered to take it off and put it in their pocket. In fact they probably feel comforted by its presence assuming it to have magical properties to ward off all kinds of evil spirits. Alas the virus hasn’t been told the rules, so when they get into a mass of coughing individuals they are afforded no protection whatsoever. They look so ‘slovenly’ as my late father-in-law would have described kids with hands in pockets or people wearing their baseball caps indoors. I have some sympathy with his thinking, although I would apply it to the older generation rather than the young in this instance.
Great Yarmouth seafront, the soft sand pock-marked by thousands of shoeless feet
Great Yarmouth continues to intrigue, with its mix of gaudy amusement arcades and fun rides which contrast with some lovely Victorian and Edwardian buildings and the opportunity for visitors to promenade in a horse-drawn carriage. I note that the latter are fitted with strategically placed slings to catch the horse manure, instead of it lying in offensive steaming heaps on the carriageway. Great Yarmouth should put on its road signs – “Welcome to Great Yarmouth – a shit-free town”.
A blast from the past- The Winter Garden (now is in a state of disrepair)
Despite the ‘down-at-heal’ image that many of us have of Great Yarmouth, it is a nice clean town undergoing considerable redevelopment including a big new swimming pool complex. Even their public toilets are open – which goes down well with ‘the wife’.
As we strike out northwards, we are bathed in sunshine and have a nice cool breeze at our backs. The beach is quite wide here with a significant number of marram grass tufts sprouting up at its landward edge, which indicates inundation by the sea is a rare occurrence.
Marram grass tufts
Across the soft dry sands the breaking waves of the ‘German Ocean’ are too inviting to ignore and we enjoy walking the firm damp sand, being careful to dodge the occasional oversized wave that threatens our coastal promenade.
Barring our way a few hundred metres north is the grand bulk of the Britannia Pier. Built in 1858, four years after the Wellington Pier, it houses a theatre for the enjoyment of Great Yarmouth’s patrons. Alas it is closed this year due to Corona-virus. I note that the acts that have had to be rescheduled for 2021 include Jimmy Carr and Jim Davidson, so perhaps it’s not all bad news.
As we approach the pier, it is noteworthy that it no-longer juts out into the sea the way it would have done back in 1858. The mooring bollards on the end now serve no useful purpose, since there is no water for the steamers to float in. So much sand has now accumulated, through natural processes or human intervention, that it is landlocked.
The land-locked Britannia Pier
North of the pier significant sand dunes have formed, covered with an extensive blanket of marram grass, suggesting the coast here is accreting sediment, unlike at Pakefield further south, where it is eroding rapidly. The 3.5 miles that take us to Caister-on-Sea are a little monotonous, not to mention lop-sided due to the slope of the beach, so we gratefully take advantage of the sea wall to follow a more elevated and level route. It was built in 1953 as a result of the Storm Surge of that year, which killed several hundred people along this coast. The wall also acts as an anchor point for the wind-blown sand, giving rise to substantial sand dunes, some of which have swallowed the wall up completely.
Caister has a proud lifeboat tradition, with the motto “Caister Men Never Turn Back” emblazoned across its front. A noble, if potentially foolhardy sentiment. Today the Caister Men require a tractor to launch their lifeboat, which has to ferry the boat back and forth across the significant beach. I wonder if they feel a little inferior compared-to many of their compatriots at other lifeboat stations whenever they launch – no macho barrelling down a slip-way, followed by a glorious splash, as they follow in the footsteps of Grace Darling. Talking of Grace Darling, are their no ‘Caister Women’? I’m sure if there were they would have the sense to turn back on those occasions when it would be the wiser choice. Humour aside, I salute the RNLI for their selfless endeavours. It never ceases to amaze me that such an organisation is funded as a charity and that the brave crews are volunteers.
The old Caister Lifeboat Station – a shiny new one sits behind it
Several miles offshore is Scroby Sands, a shoal or sandbank infamous for being the cause of many a wreck. As a child I used to picture shipwrecks taking place on pointed rocks. It never occurred to me that soft sand could also lead to the same end. The substrate may be softer, but a grounded vessel still risks being capsized by heavy seas. Today the sands are populated by a wind farm which produces 60Mw of power – sufficient to provide for all the homes in Norwich. We can just make-out a ship servicing the wind turbines and are surprised to see it is jacked-up on four legs sitting on the seabed. This makes sense, since the last thing you want is for a large boat in heavy seas to smash into one of them.
Marine chart showing the location of Scroby Sands (dark blue on right)
The United Kingdom is considered to be the best location for wind farms in Europe and providing 20% of our electricity needs in 2019. The UK Government has committed to 40GW of offshore generation by 2030 – greater than our current electricity demand.
Scroby Sand Wind Farm – being serviced by a 4-legged ship
This seems like a good place to pause for lunch. As we sit booted and backpack carrying, a large, bearded, elderly gentleman and his thin wife approach us.
“Have ye walked from Great Yarmouth?” He enquires in his thick Scottish accent.
“We have.” I acknowledge.
“Is it far?”
“About three and a half miles.” Betty answers.
“Och, we were thinking about walking there because we saw a sign saying Yarmouth 1 mile.”
He thanks us, bids us “good-day” and shuffles back to his static caravan.
I suspect 1 mile would be just about his walking limit. I’m intrigued that people go on holiday to a seaside resort just 3.5 miles from Great Yarmouth and they don’t know how far away it is. Perhaps I’m a map nerd, but it would be the first thing I’d want to know. Then again, why would I ever want to stay 3.5 miles from Yarmouth in a static caravan amongst 200 others?
Deciding that the coast is not just about walking on the sand, we decide to explore the nearby backstreets of Caister which take us parallel to the coast for a while. We pass the aptly named “Never turn Back” pub before the road turns into a rough track and then a footpath through the dunes, which provide sufficient cover for a wild wee before we re-join the beach.
A little further north we encounter the type of hard engineering becoming increasingly necessary along eroding coastline – riprap. These enormous lumps of hard rock are usually imported by boat from places such as Norway and are dropped into position at high tide. As you can see from the photograph below, waves are forced to break on these artificial reefs, inducing deposition of sand and shingle to form a beach. Without the protection of a beach, the sea would quickly erode the dunes beyond.
Rip-rap ‘reef’ stabilises the sand behind it and protects the sand dunes (to the left)
Over a matter of a few hundred metres we have evidently moved from an area where sand is accreting to one where it is being eroded, such is the fickle nature of the seas around our coast. The hard engineering may serve its purpose at present, but who knows what effect it will have on the coast either side of it? You can’t stop the sea doing its business, just encourage it to do so elsewhere.
Walking north along the beach we come to California. In 1848 some 16th Century gold coins were found on the beach here at a time when California, USA was at the centre of the Gold Rush. You know the song: “In a cavern, in a canyon, excavating for a mine, lived a miner, a 49er and his daughter Clementine”. Apparently that’s how the local California came by its name. Here the sand dunes give way to low, soft, sandy cliffs which are probably of Pleistocene origin. They are more consolidated than the loose sand of the dunes, but are no match for the sea. The sea wall protects the cliffs in part, but is replaced by much less expensive rip-rap and baskets of pebbles (gabions) as we approach Scratby.
The concrete sea wall south of California is replaced by rip-rap boulders and gabions at Scratby
Erosion of the cliffs at California, Scratby and further north at Hemsby has been in the news for some time. Locals are locked in a battle with the Environment Agency, tasked with spending their limited budget on protecting only those bits of coastline that offer value for money. Holiday camps and caravan parks rank well down the list.
Improvised cliff protection at California
The owner of the above property has made a vain attempt to shore up the soft cliffs with little more than tongue and groove boarding. The vegetation at the bottom suggests the sea does not encroach very often, but when it does the impact can be devastating, as shown by drone footage taken at Hemsby a mile or two further north. https://youtu.be/UsaH007vyjs
We climb up the steps at California, keen to walk along the top of the cliff, giving us an alternative viewpoint of the coast. The Norfolk Coast Path takes us along The Promenade, a rough road on the top of the fast retreating cliffs where a large number of permanent dwellings await their fate over the coming decade or two.
How long before these bungalows are under threat?
It’s a patchy picture with the sea apparently not posing an immediate threat a little further along, where beach vegetation suggests the sea is a good distance from the cliffs. Of course one excessively high tide coupled with stormy weather can reverse this in a matter of hours.
Relatively stable-looking, well vegetated cliffs north of Scratby
Arriving at Newport, a stretch of farmland separates it from Scratby. North of this, Newport is a sea of static caravans and holiday chalets. A number of brick-built homes separate this holiday settlement from the sea. Perched on the very edge of the soft sand cliffs are a number of timber-built homes. Many others existed here until 2018, when high tides and storm conditions conspired to remove the soft sand upon which their foundations were built. The Bible warns us about building on such land, but these house-owners chose not too. https://youtu.be/UsaH007vyjs
I suspect the cliffs here are largely derived from wind-blown sand. It is uncertain however how much longer the more permanent homes and the caravan sites will survive, perhaps several decades or even over a hundred years. One assumes that the owners of the ‘shacks’ that are only a few metres from the cliff edge are well aware of the risks involved. However, I wonder how aware the owners of the substantial brick-built houses are. Several hundred thousand pounds-worth of investment could be in jeopardy. Still buying/building a house for £100,000 that lasts 100 years is not too bad a return on investment.
Temporary homes, some of them well-built, others less so
At Hemsby we find ourselves in the heart of the‘tourist-land’, commonly known as Hemsby Beach. Fred Pontins had a couple of holiday camps here from 1920 to 2009. I choke with nostalgia about such places, since I worked and lived at Butlins, Filey for 6 weeks back in the 1970’s. In reality I wouldn’t be seen dead holidaying in such a place today, but that is what happens with advancing years – tastes change!
The vast majority of holiday-makers at Hemsby Beach could be labelled as being ‘at-risk’ during the current Covid 19 pandemic. Too much beer, pies and sticky puddings. “Cut out the carbs!”
We quickly leave Hemsby behind us, returning to walking along the sands and come across a surprising sight – wheel-chair tracks. It is an adventurous promenader who ventures across a beach in a wheel chair. In fact it is obviously one of those ‘cross-country’ equipped models, with four wheel drive. As we follow the tracks which stick to the firmer sand at the water’s-edge I am impressed by the length of their foray. A mile further on, we catch up with the driver and her husband. Both are in their 80’s I suspect, he tall and athletic-looking, sporting a large pair of binoculars. A cocker spaniel runs around them, playing with a retriever which accompanies another couple. They have evidently just met, with the two couples locked in the kind of conversation that non-dog-owners like ourselves would find difficult to comprehend. I take my hat off to anyone unable to walk, who has the fortitude to find another way of embracing the joys of the great outdoors. I am even more impressed when we walk another half mile following her tracks before she evidently turned back to where we passed them.
Finally we arrive at Winterton, indicated by the increasing numbers of humans apparently stranded here like beached whales on a turning tide. This species rarely walks more than 200 metres along a beach, which provides valuable business for the owners of a nearby car park. On the other hand we have the inconvenience of a further half mile walk to our car parked on a suburban street for free!
‘Whales’ – beached by the falling tide. They’ll only be able to move once the tide returns