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On the Ordnance Map it says 'Peddars Way & Norfolk Coast Path'. We'll come back to the name shortly, but yesterday we walked a good section of it. Or at least the coastal bit. After an hour swanning around on a deserted beach at Brancaster, we walked back to the village and along the path that borders the salt marsh in order to put down Adnams and crab sandwiches at the pub. They've laid railway sleepers covered in netting down as a boardwalk across the deeply soggy ground, a brilliant idea that means progress is swift, except for when a dog decides to nose-dive into the black ooze. A beautiful spring day, walking in single file past flint and brick cottages, stacks of thatchers' reeds and the upturned pale green leaves of whitebeams. And of course the Pleasing Decay highlights of rusty iron and lobster creels on the quayside. The Peddars Way though, is something completely different in both character and orientation, running from either Holme next the Sea, Thornham or Brancaster (the indecision of the mapmaker) to Walsingham and then down into Suffolk. So why do they lump both tracks into the same footpath name? It has that faint smack of a council office somehow, a rubber stamp convenience, easier filing. No, it's the Norfolk Coast Path, and joining it at three points is the Peddars Way. So there. But both worth putting stout boots on for.
Out across Norfolk to try on some trousers in Holt, and thence to Wells-next-the-Sea to eat fish 'n' chips in that place that gets around VAT by not giving you a plate or cutlery to eat them with. Norfolk is full of surprises, and on a day like yesterday the low bright winter light pinpointed many things for me. Bayfield Hall sits above the River Glaven between Letheringsett and Glandford, an Elizabethan house with an 18th century frontage sharing the landscape with the ruined church of St.Margaret's. The sort of scene that would've got John Piper's paint brushes working overtime. And then I saw the pale brick entrance piers on the driveway, and this rusty fastening on the open gate. That's what I love about the county. Telling detail in the shadow of trees one minute, bleak atmospheric visions the next. The wooden landing stages mark the course of a creek winding through from Brancaster Bay to tiny Thornham. Treacherous marsh intersected by gurgling channels hiding their deep sucking mud from the unwary, and all the time the incessant cry of a curlew settling down for the night. Listen to their haunting cry here; so essential to any unfolding drama on the wireless that's set on these lonely wind-buffeted margins.
On the Ordnance Map it says 'Peddars Way & Norfolk Coast Path'. We'll come back to the name shortly, but yesterday we walked a good section of it. Or at least the coastal bit. After an hour swanning around on a deserted beach at Brancaster, we walked back to the village and along the path that borders the salt marsh in order to put down Adnams and crab sandwiches at the pub. They've laid railway sleepers covered in netting down as a boardwalk across the deeply soggy ground, a brilliant idea that means progress is swift, except for when a dog decides to nose-dive into the black ooze. A beautiful spring day, walking in single file past flint and brick cottages, stacks of thatchers' reeds and the upturned pale green leaves of whitebeams. And of course the Pleasing Decay highlights of rusty iron and lobster creels on the quayside. The Peddars Way though, is something completely different in both character and orientation, running from either Holme next the Sea, Thornham or Brancaster (the indecision of the mapmaker) to Walsingham and then down into Suffolk. So why do they lump both tracks into the same footpath name? It has that faint smack of a council office somehow, a rubber stamp convenience, easier filing. No, it's the Norfolk Coast Path, and joining it at three points is the Peddars Way. So there. But both worth putting stout boots on for.
