Wells-next-the-Sea

Wells-next-the-Sea, a dramatic setting for a long delayed celebration

Journey of a Covid Survivor

And so, we went East on the M62 and South on the A1(M) and then East and Easter and Further East along tunnel-like Autumnal lanes, going nowhere but to the edge of the island nation and the impossibly bronze and blue  horizons of the north Norfolk coast. It was what I call “getting away from it all” with precious friends.

Me, Michael, Sally, Janet

Wells-next-the-Sea

To Quay View Cottage, a three-storey, perfectly situated, beautifully clean, well-equipped holiday let which had everything we needed to hunker down at Halloween, catch up and put the world to rights. As W H Hudson (author, naturalist and ornithologist) described it:

There are few places in England where you can get so much wildness and desolation of sea and sandhills, woods, green marsh and grey saltings as at Wells in Norfolk.

View from our bedroom at Quay View Cottage

Celebrations Assemble

Reasons to gather:

• two postponed 60th birthday weekends
• an imminent 65th birthday
• the awarding of an OBE
• the recent Empty Nesting and the happiness/success of All Our Daughters
• the recovery of Yours Truly from Ghastly Nasty Covid

Wells-next-the-Sea with, top left, the "old" lifeboat station

Gulls and Geese

The purple evening light (a bit like the “blue hour” of twilight in Scandinavia) bathed the tail end of half term holidaymakers, the younglings squealing as the seagulls and geese swooped and squabbled for territory on the harbour walls and local soccer field.

Sea Wall Defences

In such a flat, expansive landscape, a little elevation goes a long way. It was therefore memorable to walk the length of the Flood Defence Wall under dramatic skies.

Dangerous maze-like coast

The marshes, scrubland, sea, sandbanks and horizons intermingled in ever-changing arrangements, connecting and disconnecting in disorientating maze-like channels. And over us all, the massive skies, moody, broody, threatening, and glorious.

Yes, I Know I used the bottom left snap already, but it just sums up my memory of the weekend!

Holkham Bay

Our destination at the end of the Flood Defence Wall was the two-mile stretch of Holkham Beach, bleeding into dunes which sheltered us from the wind for our picnic.

There's that same pic again, along with Holkham beach, a basking seal and colourful beach huts

Offshore wind farms

Behind us was the desolation of nature and in front of us, bending the mind, were limitless skies merging into the horizon-stretching sea. Could that be a mirage or an offshore wind farm?

Wells Crab House

We self-catered apart from one evening spent in the intimate and informal Wells Crab House where you can identify the name of the fisherman who caught the food on your plate. As the website (justifiably) boasts “Nothing better than getting our deliveries so fresh with wellies still dripping with the sea.” So, there was Curry Battered Prawns, Mackerel Terrine, Haddock Pot and Salmon Noodles followed by Scallop Crumble, Crab Platter, Lobster and Fresh Cod.

Sandbanks and quicksands

Travel writer, Peter Sager, wrote of north Norfolk:

What a coast this is, with its salt marshes and lavender, its channels, dunes, bays and crumbling Ice Age cliffs, lonelier and wilder than its Suffolk neighbour, Arctic, melancholic, beautiful, treacherous, with sandbanks and quicksands, storms and floods, and never-ending erosion.

Sadly the East Coast is the likeliest bit of England to be lost to the sea if the impending climate catastrophe is not averted. Now I have spent time on this watery land, clinging to the island flats, I feel that losing north Norfolk (and, for that matter, parts of Lincolnshire, Cambridgeshire and north Wales) to the sea would be a tragedy.

Tale of Two Abbeys

Making Sense of the Present in the Past
It’s July, so clearly, it must be Time To Read Informative English Heritage Panels at a historical site somewhere.

Whitby Abbey
In other words, it’s Emily’s birthday…. And post-lockdown who could resist the siren lure of the sea washing on a northern shore? Dracula called from not so many miles away…. or, more precisely, Abbess Hilda and the poet Caedmon summoned us from West to North Yorkshire to Whitby Abbey…. An unexpectedly blue sky gave the ruins a bright vibrancy and it was easy to imagine the disruptive (Saint) Wilfrid and the gossipy “historian” Bede bustling about the place.

Socially-distanced beach
It was necessary, if not compulsory, to buy Fish n Chips from The Magpie and enjoy them on the beach, in spite of the keen seagulls. And it was necessary to visit The Whitby Bookshop and revel in the town’s independent quirkiness. Face masks came on and off easily and most shops had clear sanitation procedures. Visitors were by and large sensible and conscious of protecting fellow citizens from the current global pandemic.

Bolton Abbey
The Bolton Abbey Estate has had plenty of practice at organising large-scale responses to annual events so their one-way nature trails (to The Strid, to Bolton Castle, to the Valley of Desolation) are welcoming and well organised. So, for Day Two of the Birthday Season, although we didn’t venture into the Abbey ruins themselves, we had a yomping walk through rooty forest trails with a picnic under the canopy of trees.  Another year, another birthday. Good food, good drink, good company, three venues: Whitby, Bolton Abbey and home. Where the heart is.

Jura

Wild Ride 

Thursday was a squally day with whips of wind and froths of foam. Would our sea trip be cancelled? No such luck! So we boarded the Jura Passenger Ferry from Tayvallich and bounced across the waters in a cabined box with a bear of a driver/pilot/skipper to Craighouse where I was very very happy to step onto dry and steady land.

The Wicker Man meets The Angel’s Share

I felt there was something other-worldly about Jura – and wondered whether the whisky fumes had infiltrated the bloodstreams of the islanders. Sally and I enjoyed a sticky treat in the Anchors Café with its super-friendly owner (who, reminiscent of Denis Lawson’s character in the film Local Hero, seemed to have a finger in every island pie.) Chris and Harriet took a full tour of the distillery and emerged alive!

Craoibh Haven

Jura felt stranger than many of the Scottish islands we’ve visited so far, although it ranks as one of the Inner Hebrides and I’ve yet to travel to the Outer Hebrides. A display of Ye Olde Photos of Jura in the local church had some quite disturbing historical visual records but I imagine many remote islands would have similar dark episodes in their past. During our week we had one meal out at The Lord of the Isles in Craiobh Haven (pronounced Croove Haven.) The restaurant served excellent food (monkfish, steaks, fish n chips) and had welcoming and jolly staff, as well as locals dining in alongside tourists like us.

Bonnie Scotland

It’s hard to explain why our holidays in Scotland always seem to suit us as a family: the awe-inspiring landscapes, the twisty, fascinating history, the welcoming people we always seem to meet… the habit we have on these holidays of hunkering down in the evenings with good food, good wine (and beer), a tiptop jigsaw (see bottom collage), playing cards (Uno), board games (Ludo), reading books and putting the world to rights.

Releasing cares

Scotland feels like a place where I can forget the cares of everyday life. I’m sure there are economic and cultural pressures on those who live there permanently, particularly in the remoter regions. But the rewards of the seasonal lifestyle seem, to me, satisfying. The views certainly are.

The Crinan Trail and Chamber Tombs

Crinan Harbour to Castle Dounie

Crinan Harbour was peaceful and still. The Crinan Trail began on a seaweed-strewn rocky beach and wound upwards through wet, muddy forest to coastline views. We had coffee on a bench overlooking the Argyll skerries and then climbed higher and higher to Castle Dounie, the ruins of a fort on a headland peak with a staggering view north and south along the coast.

Down to the coast again

The descent was through sap-dropping, moss-blanketed, lichen-sprouting forest glades on paths that merged and emerged, twisted and meandered back to the surprising sight of the car – a metal incongruity in such a primitive, natural landscape. 

Arduaine Gardens

Arduaine Gardens is a lovely, lush semi-tropical paradise with winding paths and yet more romantic views of the Argyll coast. Rhododendrons, azaleas, magnolias, giant Himalayan lilies and forget-me-nots compete for attention in what seems like a series of hidden “garden rooms.” Very relaxing. The garden was begun in 1898 when collecting exotic flora from around the world was a favourite pastime for intrepid plant hunters who had the resources to fund journeys of discovery, sympathetic retrieval, and collection.

Kilmartin Glen's Prehistoric Treasures

An imaginative guide gave us a guided tour of Kilmartin Glen taking in prehistoric burial cairns, stone circles and standing stones. There was a Canterbury Tales-style hotchpotch of eccentric fellow travellers from around the world to keep the guide on his toes. I learned a new word: cists – meaning a stone-built “coffin box”to hold the bones or full bodies of the dead. A deluge fell from the heavens as we returned to the on-sight café – were the ancient gods displeased with us for disturbing the ancient burial chambers?

Lochgilphead

Corlach Peak

Our first adventure on our September 2019 Scottish holiday was to heave ourselves up to the top of Corlach Peak (above our rented house) to gain an appreciation of the jagged coastline stretching across the horizon. The cows and sheep were very adept at negotiating the scrubby thistle-tangled rocks and tussocks, but we had to proceed slowly, especially on the downward trajectory.

Corlach

Paul and Mary (our hosts) welcomed us and revealed the quirks of Corlach (our rented house, not far from the town of Lochgilphead.) The view was mesmerising, and it was hard not to simply gape, slack-jawed at the waters of Loch Craignish which fed into the Sound of Jura and the distant Paps (the high peaks) on Jura. Somewhere out there was the Atlantic Ocean and so, facing west, we had a good chance of a picturesque sunset or two.

Loch Coille-Bharr

Our first big adventure was a hike around Loch Coille-Bharr and through primeval forests to the end of the peninsula (24,614 steps!) A miraculous picnic table appeared in the unlikeliest of spots right at the furthest point of the walk – a wonderful reward. Boy, did we need it, since the blustering wind on our backs and faces was a challenge but a challenge we faced like the intrepid explorers we were. Not another human being appeared all day.

The Living Dead

The sun sparkled on the loch on our return journey as further reward for our efforts and we traversed areas that had been reclaimed for a family of beavers, an eery, primitive wetlands. The path went up, down, high, low, in and out of mossy trees covered in lichen.

Immersion in Nature

We stepped over hoppity frogs and marvelled at weird mushrooms – it felt like a total immersion in nature – no neon signs or concrete pavements to be seen…. The final treat was an authentic Celtic cross, always something that triggers the pleasure zones in me (not to mention a good few minutes of imaginative time-travelling fantasy daydreaming.)

Bays and Stones

Castle Point
Aside from Castles and Gardens in Dumfries and Galloway, we wanted to explore the coast and began with Rockcliffe village and bay, very picturesque on a wild and windy day. We climbed the Mote of Mark, a dramatic hill fort with a viewpoint across the bay (and mythical links with Merlin from the King Arthur stories.) Teetering on the pebbles along the coastal walk we were wind-whipped and rain-lashed but found a sheltering tree for a blustery picnic. Wild. As we ascended the headland we stumbled upon Joseph Nelson’s Grave; he was a victim of the shipwreck of The Ann, lost in January 1791 (Nelson’s body washed ashore in July, six months after the disaster.) Our destination was Castle Point, a high promontory with panoramic views along the coast. The return journey included an alarming herd-of-cows attack, so I had to summon my Inner Farmer to bring the family to safe haven….

Naked shingles of the world
Mossyard Beach was another memorable stop, a magical shell-covered beach with a series of dunes and the noise of waves rolling in, slurching out, relentlessly flowing and ebbing, (from Matthew Arnold's Dover Beach:)
Listen! You hear the grating roar
Of pebbles which the waves draw back, and fling,
At their return, up the high strand,
Begin, and cease, and then again begin….

Making Old Stuff Freshly New 
Frequent surprises on this trip were provided by the terrific guides or custodians of every site we visited, even when we were spending only the briefest of comfort stops, for example at Dundrennan Abbey (the last place Mary Queen of Scots stayed before leaving Scotland forever) or Carsluith Castle with its welcome coffee/Deli shop. Was it the lyrical nature of the Scottish accent, or just the well-trained tourist-friendly gift-of-the-gab? Who knew bits of old rock could be made so dramatic and inspirational? But so it was at Cairn Holy I and II, two chambered cairns with their cup-and-ring marks and tantalising glimpses into burial practices that we can only imagine. Who rested there? A religious figure? The mythical Scottish King Galdus? A famous Somebody who is famous No More?
Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!

Castle Point

Castles and Gardens

Gatehouse of Fleet
Via (our favourite) Tebay services and a supermarket in Dumfries, we headed for Gatehouse of Fleet, a small town on the edge of the Galloway Forest Park in Scotland.  En route (and during our trip) we were hooked on the audio book of Stacey Hall’s The Familiars, a fictionalised account of what happened in Pendle in 1612. Our remote coastal cottage was windswept and atmospheric, but it didn’t take long to unpack and feel at home by setting up a Shakespeare-themed jigsaw to do over the four evenings and we settled down to enjoy a lasagne we’d made back home in Saltaire. The cottage had restful views, by day and by night, with lights twinkling across the waters and, on some evenings, dramatic sunsets as well as a heavenly firmament of stars. Bliss.

Two Castles, Two Gardens
Our first stop was Drumlanrig Castle, an impressive, imposing and grand pile with glorious grounds – borders, lawns, woodland copses, a waterfall, a bog area, a winter garden and an Andy Goldsworthy arch. There were sylvan summer houses hidden around and, decorating lived-in interiors in the castle itself, an astonishing collection of artworks, two of which over-excited me: a Rembrandt and a Breughel. The young, intelligent guide was dry and witty so the whole place came to life. By way of contrast, but no less interesting imho, Cardoness Castle (with another enthusiastic Scottish custodian) was a one-room per floor castle (a “Tower House”) on a giant mound overlooking the Fleet Estuary. Our first garden fix came courtesy of Cally Gardens, first created in the 18th century and which included a giant, walled romantic garden undergoing fascinating restoration. A much bigger site was Threave Gardens – a perfect place to picnic and large enough to accomodate cascades, a rock garden, a bizarre mushroom-shaped shelter, a “secret” garden, a garden of contemplation, and a mixture of formal borders and informal meadow-style borders.

Bring me laughter

Sally, Sue (friends from Primary School), me and Birthday Boy, Brian - Mad Hatters all!

Wide horizons
Our good friend, Brian, had a special birthday recently – a fine excuse to return to one of my favourite hotels – The Midland in Morecambe. With its backdrop of wide horizons across the bay to the Lake District. With its ever-changing skies with scudding clouds, sudden acres of blue and plentiful “god rays” revealing sea spouts and turbulent weather in the distance. We didn’t get rained on which was a blessing and we could marvel at the cry of the gulls, the salty spray and the great pleasures of spending time with amici sympatici (sympathetic friends.)

Blowing away the cobwebs and putting the world to rights....

Art Deco
I’ve blogged about this place before (here and here) but it has never failed to impress with its art deco features, Eric Gill sculptures inside and out and atmospheric setting, perfect for film companies to exploit (as indeed they have, often for mystery thrillers – Poirot and The Bay both filmed here.)

The Midland Hotel in Morecambe

Chatter of Mad Hatters
Over dinner, breakfast (and tea in Heysham at the Mad Hatter’s Café!) we put the world to rights talking about our lives, the universe and everything in between. Needless to say the quality of the food at The Midland is very high with sea food an obvious speciality, given the location.

Viking Legends
Walking along the wide promenade to Heysham is a must on visits to The Midland where St Peter’s Church and St Patrick’s chapel are dramatically sited to inspire a sense of History and awe. St Peter’s was consecrated in 967 CE but there is archaeological evidence of an earlier wooden church. My favourite item inside the church is a Viking hogback stone portraying the legends of Sigmund and Sigurd.

Tantalising buried secrets
St Patrick’s chapel on the promontory above St Peter’s is well worth the extra climb. Looked after by the National Trust, its most significant feature is the presence of rock cut graves, probably ossuaries to hold bones, but historical speculation will no doubt continue about these mysterious “coffins,” particularly since further excavation in 1993 revealed over a thousand artefacts left by a hunter-gatherer group from about 1000 BCE. The area has been preserved from development for a future research dig.

Bring me sunshine....
The other “must-do” activity in Morecambe is to pay tribute to Eric Morecambe’s statue by Graham Ibbetson; and take the obligatory photograph before winding through the northern countryside back through Lancashire and into the North Yorkshire moors, stopping, naturally, at Ribblehead for a final treat of Victorian engineering….

Graham Ibbetson's statue of Eric Morecambe and the stunning Ribblehead Viaduct

Iron Ring of Castles

Peaceful Now, Iron Ring Not Needed
Knowing that Edward I built his “Iron Ring of Castles” in this area of north Wales to control the rebellious Welsh is easy to forget when you stand on Conwy beach and look across to the Great Orme (the massive chunk of limestone rising up near Llandudno.) The beach has golden sandbanks and dunes, as well as charming bluebell walks to reach it from certain directions.

Penrhyn Castle (Castle Penrhyn)
Was NOT one of Edward I’s Iron Ring – in fact is is a Victorian pile with faux medieval features, but with the attraction of enchanting William Morris decoration and pre-Raphaelite paintings. The displays about the impact of the building of the railways and the use of the local slate quarry were compelling, probably because the information honestly and imaginatively confronted the slave trade’s role in contributing to the growing economy of the Pennant family in the 17th and 18th centuries.

From “pretend” Castle Penrhyn to Fortress Caernarvon
Sturdy Caernarfon (Canarvon Castle to English tongues) is a lynchpin of the Iron Ring and has been home to several important historical events, not least of which was the investiture of Prince Charles in 1969 and, five decades earlier in 1911, the future King Edward VIII, both becoming Prince of Wales. The mighty, heavily restored Caernarvon boasts Castillian octagonal turrets (no less than three on the Eagle Tower.) 

Multimedia Castle
Imaginative multi-media displays brought different periods of the castle’s history to life. There was a circular projection that helped fill in the timeline, a giant “chess board” depicting the ownership of the title “Prince of Wales”, a shadow-puppet pageant of Eleanor of Castille’s life and a dramatic depiction of Edward I’s manipulation (to his own ends) of the myths of King Arthur.

The Museum of the Royal Welch Fusiliers
Within the Castle is an account of the distinguished Welch Fusiliers (yes, spelled with a c not an s!) The regiment was raised in 1689 and the museum contains fascinating material, including an account of Jenny Jones and Mother Ross, women who dressed as men to fight beside their comrades. A goat has been the regiment’s mascot since 1777 and, since 1844 and Queen Victoria’s “gift,” the goat has always been a “royal goat.” The new royal baby, Archie, appeared in early May, so it seemed somewhat fitting that we were visiting one of Archie’s ancestor’s large-scale Defence of the Realm F-Off castles. Will Archie ever be crowned Prince of Wales? (As Seventh in line to the throne, it is unlikely but, then again, who would have predicted Edward VIII’s life choices back in 1911?)

Harriet was off camping on this holiday; and this pic includes the longest town name in the UK