Walk 97 -- Dersingham, via Sandringham Park and Castle Rising, to King's Lynn

Ages: Colin was 61 years and 295 days. Rosemary was 59 years and 72 days.
Weather: Snow flurries, but it didn’t settle. Cold.
Location: Dersingham to King’s Lynn.
Distance: 11½ miles.
Total distance: 740 miles.
Terrain: Woodland walks and pavements.
Tide: Don’t know, because we didn’t get near the sea!
Rivers to cross: No.33, Babingley River near Castle Rising.
Ferries: None.
Piers: None.
Kissing gates: No.85 in Dersingham. No.86 in woods after Castle Rising. Nos. 87 & 88 in South Wootton.
Pubs: ‘The Ouse Amateur Sailing Club’ in King’s Lynn, where Colin drank Iceni ‘It’s a grand day’ and Elgood’s ‘Old Wagg’, and I enjoyed Cheddar Valley Farmhouse cider. (We actually visited this club at a later date as it was closed when we got to it.)
‘English Heritage’ properties: No.31, Castle Rising Castle.
Ferris wheels: None.
Diversions: None.
How we got there and back: We were staying with Paul and Caroline in Isleham. We drove up to King’s Lynn where we parked on top of a building, which was the ‘long-term’ car park. There was a heavy fall of sleety snow as we were changing into our boots and we very nearly didn’t go. But it stopped after about ten minutes, so we changed our minds again! We walked to the bus station, and caught a bus to Dersingham – the bus passed Sandringham House which we were just able to see over the wall. We walked from the bus stop in Dersingham to the old railway station where we finished the last Walk.
At the end, we walked from the ferry to the car park on top of the shops. (I had difficulty getting up the steps because my knee had given out!) After drinking tea, we drove back to Isleham.

We started to walk through Dersingham ‘station’ with its beautiful wooden canopied roofs, but we seemed to have lost the path. The area is now a builders’ yard, and one of the workers took us back to the road to show us the clearly marked footpath running behind the station buildings. (Never mind, he’ll be an old geezer one day!) After a few yards it opened out, and there seemed to be a lot of building stuff strewn about. It was very untidy and a bit swampy. We followed the ‘railway’ until it merged with the main road that we had been trying to avoid, but the ‘line’ had disappeared before then leaving us in a kind of limbo.
We saw the path we wanted to follow through the southern edge of Dersingham, but it was the other side of a dyke. Colin gingerly led me over a grating which spanned it, thereby saving us about a hundred yards of walking to get round the end. We negotiated our way along a few streets and across the first bit of Dersingham Common okay, but after we crossed a road we got lost! The problem was the number of footpaths which radiated out from the point where we were standing, none of which were marked as the public footpath we wished to follow. We chose the one we thought was right, but it curved round too much to the left so I was unhappy about it. We wanted to get into Sandringham Country Park, but on our map was a solid black line between it and Dersingham Common. However a green dotted line led to the barrier on the Common side and a black dotted line led away from the same point on the Park side, so we were hoping there would be a gate. We came to a ditch and an impenetrable rhododendron hedge with a wooden plank and a gap—Bingo! we were there!
But once inside the path led us all over the place ending up behind some buildings. I looked at the map again, said we must have come through the wrong gap and suggested we looked for another one further down. We returned to the gap and the plank, and walked a very long way on the outside of the rhododendron hedge. When we started going round a bend to the right I realised that there was no other gap—but it took another fifty yards of insistence before I could persuade Colin to turn round because he always gets so arsey when we go wrong. It was only when I promised to take full responsibility for all the ills of the world that we returned to the one and only gap. I tried another route through the bushes on the other side, and came out exactly where we wanted to be! Did I get any praise for it? Don’t be silly!
We walked along to a picnic area, decided it was time for lunch and sat down at one of the tables. That was when it started snowing. So there we were, eating our measly sandwiches in the Queen’s back garden in the snow, and she didn’t even ask us in for a cup of tea! I used one of her rhododendron bushes as a loo—I bet she’s never done that! It stopped snowing, so we continued on our way. We followed a road between the trees which seemed rather grand. Ahead we saw a pair of ornamental gates which looked awfully closed and unclimbable! What if we can’t get out of the Park? It’s miles round to the proper entrance! Fortunately they were not locked (relief!) and anyway they were only there for show because there was no fence or wall and we could have walked round either edge of them!There was a folly up on a knoll to our right just before the gates, but we couldn’t see it and we didn’t have time to go looking for it. We had wasted enough time getting lost, and we still had a long way to go before dark. We took the path opposite through some woods, and came to a crossroads. We thought we would have to walk along roads from thereon, but there was a parallel path through the woods alongside the first road for about half a mile which made it much more pleasant. Then we came to the hated main road, and for nearly a mile there was no way we could avoid it. We crossed, and found there was a cycle track running parallel—so again we were fortunate. (We only had to listen to all the traffic and breathe in their polluted air, we didn’t have to play ‘dodge-the-cars’!)
We passed a corrugated iron chapel with a thatched roof. Apparently it was built in the early 20^th century to replace St Felix’s Church which is situated about a mile away out on the marshes, and is now a ruin. The cycle track turned away from the road (blissful silence!) and out on to the marshes towards Castle Rising. We crossed the Babingley River—which is hardly more than a stream—and were really out in the open exposed to miles of marshes when it started to snow again. The wind got up, and we were freezing! I suppose it was some consolation that we hadn’t tried to walk along the sea wall between the marshes and the sea, but we did wonder why we were not snuggled up in our centrally heated home back in Bognor! We struggled on, and it soon stopped. We took a back route, which was a bit damp with the snow, into the village because it was the nearest path to the coast.

On reaching Castle Rising, we made a short detour to visit the church. It is late Norman with round arches above all the doors and windows, but they are decorated because this was the second church to be built in the village. The first church was much more plain, but it was in the way when the castle was built. The original church was buried beneath the castle mound, and only discovered in the early 20^th century when renovation work was carried out on the ruined castle. The font is from the early church, one of the few fittings that was transferred. It was cold, so we sat in the shelter of the church porch to eat the second part of our lunch. The church clock ringing three o’clock reminded us how time was getting on, so we abandoned plans to revisit the castle, and set off towards King’s Lynn.

Castle Rising

When the castle at Castle Rising was built in the 12^th century, the village was a port and King’s Lynn did not exist. Over the intervening centuries the marshes took over, the sea receded and Castle Rising lost its importance. The village was built first, and the Normans constructed a stone church when they arrived in the 11^th century. Then the King, Edward II, was murdered—by having a red hot poker shoved up his backside, so I believe! A nasty ending, but apparently no one much grieved at his passing.
The problem was — what to do with his widow, the dowager Queen Isabella? She was implicated in the plot, as she wanted to put her son on the throne, but she was an interfering formidable woman known as the ‘She-Wolf of France’ and needed to be kept out of the way. The small port of Castle Rising (perhaps it had some other name before the castle was built) was considered sufficiently isolated out there on the edge of the Fens, which were in their natural flooded marshy state at the time and practically inaccessible for most of the year.
So a castle was built on the only bit of dry land for miles, and there she resided holding court whenever anyone came to visit her. She was permitted to go out riding with her ladies-in-waiting, for she couldn’t go far without getting very wet. She was visited by her son and many dignitaries of the land, but she was too far away from London or Winchester to have any more influence on the politics of the country.
In the early 20^th century, when the castle had been a ruin for many hundreds of years, some renovation work was carried out on the earth ramparts to stop the building slipping any further down the hill. That is when the ruins of an early Norman church underneath the earth bank were discovered. Obviously, this church had been in the way when the castle was built, so they built another and more elaborate one on the other side of the village, moved the font to the new church, removed the roof of the old one and simply piled earth over it. It is a rare example of an early Norman church of simple design, and still has stone seats around the side so that ‘the weak can go to the wall’.We had already visited the castle, on a cold snowy day back in January when we’d had to cancel our Walk because of the weather. We wanted to look more closely at the old Norman church because we didn’t have time that day, but time also ran out on us today. We did eventually get to photograph it a couple of months later when we were in the area walking across The Wash.
We took a path across a field and through some woods, but eventually we had to join a road. We were in an urban landscape for the rest of our Walk. We entered the village of North Wootton, and stepped inside the church to get out of the cold. The inside of the church was quite plain except for the hassocks. Every place had a hassock with a colourful tapestry design, and they had all been put on top of the pews making a wonderful display. It quite cheered us up to look at them! We went outside and sat in the porch out of the wind to eat our chocolate. While we were there, one of the church wardens turned up with some flimsy excuse as to why he was calling in at the church. This often happens when we visit churches, and we honestly don’t mind that they are really checking up on us. It means the church is well looked after, and at least it is open which is very important to us. We had quite a long chat with this man, and such people can often be a mine of information about the history of the church and village.
We continued southwards through a residential area on the very edge of the marshes. At first it was neat bungalows and detached houses, but the nearer we got to King’s Lynn so the quality of the housing deteriorated. In some places we could take a footpath behind the houses, then we got to the main road and had to walk along a cycle lane next to it. We crossed the main road with the cycle lane, and found we were following the track of the defunct railway again—only now it was passing between an industrial estate and a huge housing estate.
We cut through a residential area of North Lynn, trying to stay as near as possible to the River Great Ouse without walking through an industrial area or along the main road. (We had long since left the sea behind, having come inland to cross the river.) The grot housing we were passing got grottier and grottier! Instead of vases of flowers or bowls of plants we had seen in people’s front windows earlier, we were now passing bunches of plastic flowers, cheap looking brass and pottery horses—even a plastic sailing ship in full sail! We turned right to walk down a footpath next to a drainage ditch. In a fifty yard stretch we counted six shopping trolleys, five bikes, three push chairs and a sofa!! On the other side of the ditch, people had thrown their household rubbish over the fence and left it trailing all down the bank. Inevitably, we saw a RAT! It was as big as a cat!

What an introduction to King’s Lynn!

Colin said, “I wouldn’t like to walk down here on a dark night!” To which I replied, “It is a dark night! We have been losing light for the past hour, and we are using the street lamps now to navigate!” I was amazed my photos came out. We couldn’t believe a gap made in the fence and a wobbly ‘jetty’ constructed over the mud—surely they don’t let their children play on such an unsafe structure amongst such filth, or do they?
With some relief we emerged on to the main road at the top end of the town. Now all that remained to do was to find the ferry. Easier said than done. We got to the river bank in several different places, but never quite where the ferry was. It was very difficult in the dark, but eventually we found it. It was down an unlit narrow alley, and the ferry was still running backwards and forwards. It was only a quarter to six, and it runs until 6 o’clock each evening for commuters who live in West Lynn. The sailing club, where Colin wanted to have his ‘real ale’ was also at the end of the alley right next to the ferry, but it was shut.

We had walked all round East Anglia !!

That ended Walk no.97, we shall pick up Walk no.98 next time at the ferry across the River Great Ouse in King’s Lynn. We walked from the ferry through the very run-down shopping centre to the car park on top of the shops. About half the shops were boarded up, and the whole area was a concrete jungle. We couldn’t find the steps up to the car park at first, and when we did I had difficulty climbing them because my knee had given out! We were tired and cold, but agreed it must be warmer than when we left the car because all the snow had melted and nothing had turned to ice even though it was dark. After drinking two cups of tea each, we drove straight back to Isleham.
When we continued our Round-Britain-Walk in April, we at last got to visit the sailing club at King’s Lynn which was our pub for this Walk! It is a private club, but since it was in the ‘Good Beer Guide’ for 2004 we were able to get in because Colin is a CAMRA member. No one seemed to know what the procedure should be, whether we should sign the visitors book or not, etc. The barmaid was very friendly and laid-back, but one of the female members was obviously unhappy that non-members were taking advantage of their cheap prices and their privacy. Anyway, we bought our drinks and sat on a wooden terrace overlooking the river to imbibe. It was very pleasant, watching the comings and goings on the river, and the ferry plying back and forth.
(It was interesting to note that the sailing club did not appear in the 2005 ‘Good Beer Guide’! Did our visit have anything to do with that decision?)

Walk 96 -- Hunstanton to Dersingham

Ages: Colin was 61 years and 270 days. Rosemary was 59 years and 47 days.

Weather: Drizzle which dried up. Cloudy, but getting brighter. Mild, but a cold wind on the beach.

Location: Hunstanton to Dersingham.

Distance: 8½ miles.

Total distance: 728½ miles.

Terrain: Concrete prom, a slippery grassy bank, a sand/shingle bank of which a section was paved, a road and an old railway line which ran partly through woods.

Tide: Out.

Rivers to cross: None.

Ferries: None.

Piers: None.

Kissing gates: None.

Pubs: The ‘Fox & Hounds’ at Heacham which brews its own beer – Colin was over the moon to find two brew pubs in almost as many days! We tried LJB and ‘Shot in the Dark’.

‘English Heritage’ properties: None.

Ferris wheels: None.

Diversions: None.

How we got there and back: We were staying with Paul and Caroline in Isleham. We drove to Dersingham where we parked near a garden centre. From there we caught a bus northwards, and alighted near Tescoes at Hunstanton. Then we only had a short walk through a caravan park before reaching the sea and resuming our Trek.

At the end, we walked up to the traffic lights, turned left and we were at our car. After drinking tea, we did a bit of reccying in nearby Wolferton which decided us to miss it out and reroute our next Walk past Sandringham instead – do you think the Queen might ask us in for tea? We then drove up to Heacham to visit the ‘real ale’ pub which hadn’t been open when we had passed within half a mile of it along the coast earlier in the day – so we hadn’t bothered to detour to it at the time. After that, we drove back to Isleham.

The drizzle which had plagued us ever since we set out in the morning had almost stopped by the time we started the Walk, and later on the weather brightened up. So we only had the wind to contend with, which was against us unfortunately. We were pleased to find that the concrete prom continued for two miles southwards—far more than we had been expecting. This made walking much easier, if a little boring. We passed caravan park after caravan park, probably the reason for the long prom. They were all deserted, of course, but the beach looked nice and it is probably a lovely place to come in the Summer, particularly if you have small children. There were one or two other people out walking, which we found surprising on such a cold Monday in February—we thought we were the only crazy onees.
There was a digger on the beach, way out across the sand, with two men in bright yellow coats. We wondered if they were looking for King John’s treasure which he foolishly dropped into The Wash about seven hundred years ago when he got cut off by the tide! The legend is that he dropped his crown jewels off his carriage whilst hurriedly making his escape from the incoming water. It sank out of sight and was never seen again. We kept an eye out for it ourselves, but all we could see was mist, sea and sand. If it does exist, and if it is ever found, it would be literally priceless!
Then the concrete prom ran out. We were only half a mile from the ‘real ale’ pub at Heacham, which Colin was desperate to visit, but we were too early—makes a change for us, we are usually too late! We hadn’t got time to hang about with the long walk ahead, so we drove back there later in the afternoon. The path continued along the top of the beach, which was softish shingle and aching on the leg muscles. My arthritic toe began to complain, the first time I have had trouble with it for many a long year. Where another road came down to the beach from Heacham, we had to divert a little inland as the path continued on a bank the land side of a marsh. I found a place to sit down and apply a second dose of ‘Powergel’ to the offending digit. The bank proved to be quite slippery due to all the rain and snow we have had recently, so I elected to walk along the grass at the bottom of it while Colin determinedly kept going along the top. My toe was still giving me jip, so I resorted to painkillers in the end.
The disadvantage of being low down was that I couldn’t see the sea, but the advantage was that I was out of the wind. I also found a perfect spot to have our lunch, which Colin would have by-passed had I not called him back. We sat on a stile leading into a field. It was quite picturesque—but better than that, it was totally sheltered from all draughts! Once the painkillers had kicked in and I had given my foot a bit of a rest, I had no more trouble and completely forgot about it. On the marsh we saw curlews and starlings. The starlings suddenly rose up as one and flew round in formation, leaving the curlews standing in the water. It was a magnificent natural sight!
The marsh sort of petered out, and the path took us back to the top of the beach. There the bank was quite firm, and one section of it was concreted for no reason that we could deduce. My heart sank when I saw the shingle again, but we found the walking quite pleasant despite being back in the cold wind. We had met nobody for ages, but on that bank, at least a mile from the nearest car park, was a young woman with a child in a push chair! It looked so much the wrong kind of place to take a baby for a walk with all that wind, and it crossed my mind she might be in mental distress of some kind. But she turned round ahead of us and struggled to get her charge back to the car park, so I think my fears were unfounded. The child must have been frozen! So many parents don’t realise how cold a baby gets whilst sitting still, whereas the parent is warm due to the exertion of pushing. My heart goes out to those poor little souls at times, especially when they are crying with the cold and getting told off for it—I have even heard them being sworn at!
We went down on to the beach because we saw a seal, but it was dead. Colin thought it might have recently given birth, though there was no sign of a pup. How sad that we have seen two marine mammals in as many days, and both were dead.
We reached a road, and there was no way on. A building blocked the top of the beach, and there was no path. On the map it looked as if there might be a way along the continuation of the sea bank, but the entrance to it was all barbed wire and hedge. In the planning, I had intended going inland at that point for the following reasons:— (1) There is no access to the beach by car, bike or foot for the next eight or nine miles. (2) The way on is private land, all the way to King’s Lynn. (3) It is marshland with drainage ditches, which may be problematic to cross. (4) I don’t like mud. (5) The beach is shingly and soft. (6) The beach turns into a marsh further on. (7) It is a very remote area, miles from civilisation, and we were in the middle of a cold Winter with it getting dark early. (8) I didn’t want to go on a distance and have to turn back, walking wasted miles. (9) Marshland is dangerous, especially in the dark, and there was no way we could reach King’s Lynn until well after sunset. (10) Anyway, we had already parked the car in Dersingham. (11) My arthritic toe is easily upset. And (12) there is simply NO PATH! But try telling all of that to Colin! He wasted a lot of time with, “Let’s just go on a bit and see?” No! “We could get over this fence!” No! “I’m sure there must be a way along this bank!” No! And so on!
I wasn’t happy that our ‘nearest safe path to the coast’ was a main road, so I suggested we made up a new rule:—‘If the nearest safe path to the coast is a main road with traffic whizzing past in a speedy polluting fashion, we may find an alternative quieter route further inland so long as there is a suitable one within about a mile’. I showed Colin a footpath on the map running southwards parallel to the road from Snettisham. It joins up with the track of an old railway which we hoped may now be a path. He conceded, and even seemed rather relieved—I’m sure it was the thought of walking along a main road that was getting to him.
We started walking inland along the quiet road, and it was blissful getting out of that wind! Round the corner we came to a closed café with picnic tables outside, so we made use of them and sat down to eat our chocolate. We both felt better then! On we marched for nearly two miles. Colin got very excited when the track of the old railway came round a hill from the North to join the road we were walking on, it actually became part of the road. When we got to the main road—the one we didn’t want to walk down—he crossed over to see if we could continue along the old track through fields. But there was a hedge, and no sign of it the other side, so it was no-go.
We walked into Snettisham along ‘Beach Road’, though we were now over two miles from the beach. After about a hundred yards, we turned right into a footpath between some houses. Almost immediately we came across a building with a rotten waterwheel. A little footbridge took us across a stream which had obviously been the mill race in times gone past. We carried on across a field, and soon noticed that the track of the old railway was curving towards us. We crossed over to it and found that there was a decent firm track on top, so we walked up there rather than down on our soggy path.
We crossed over a lane, hoping that we would be able to continue along ‘our’ railway, although it wasn’t marked as a right of way on our map. It seemed quite open, a decent track with lots of footprints and cycle-tyre marks. A notice said NO PUBLIC RIGHT OF WAY but a few yards down was a doggy-poop box! So on we marched, across a couple more fields and then into a wood for about a mile. That was very pleasant, and we met several other people out enjoying woodland strolls. We were walking parallel to—and only about fifty yards away from—the main road we had rejected, but we were in a different world!
We passed behind some more houses, and came out at what used to be Dersingham Station. It is now a builder’s yard, but they have not only preserved the platforms, but the ornate wooden canopies as well. It looked great! I turned round, and read a notice about the path we had just come along. It said:

HIGHWAYS ACT 1980 SECTION 31
PRIVATE LAND
NOT DEDICATED AS A HIGHWAY
7 NOVEMBER 1984
THE PUBLIC IS HOWEVER PERMITTED
BY THE OWNER TO USE THE WAY
ON FOOT ONLY
NO CYCLING NO MOTORCYCLES

Now they tell us!

That ended Walk no.96, we shall pick up Walk no.97 next time at Dersingham ‘Station’ with its wonderful canopied roof. We walked up the road to the traffic lights, turned left and we were at our car. After drinking our tea, we drove to the hamlet of Wolferton to see if it was possible to continue from there towards King’s Lynn on the old railway track. (We had already established that it was useless where it crosses the main road, being completely overgrown and inaccessible.) We didn’t stop in Wolferton, we knew our mission was a waste of time just by looking at the properties. Talk about money! We found ourselves speaking to each other in very posh accents as we drove off! That decided us to miss it out and reroute our next Walk past Sandringham, and (still in our posh accents) we conjectured as to whether the Queen might ask us in for tea!
We had calmed down to a more sensible mood by the time we had driven up to Heacham and found the ‘real ale’ pub. Colin was over the moon to find it brewed its own beer, the second brew pub he had found in almost as many days! After our tipple—half pints only—we drove back to Isleham.

Walk 95 -- Thornham to Hunstanton

Ages: Colin was 61 years and 269 days. Rosemary was 59 years and 46 days.
Weather: Sunny at first, becoming cloudy. Windy, but mild.
Location: Thornham to Hunstanton.
Distance: 6½ miles.
Total distance: 720 miles.
Terrain: Very muddy at the outset – mainly due to snowmelt and the hundreds of people who had come out to see a stranded whale! Boardwalks across the dunes, a beach which was not as firm as we would have liked, grassy clifftop and a concrete prom.
Tide: Out, coming in.
Rivers to cross: None.
Ferries: None.
Piers: None.
Kissing gates: None.
Pubs: The ‘Ancient Marina’ at Old Hunstanton where Colin had Adnam’s Broadside and I enjoyed Gaymer’s ‘Olde English’ cider.
‘English Heritage’ properties: None.
Ferris wheels: None.
Diversions: No.28 at Hunstanton where the second fence along the clifftop had proved inadequate, so a third fence had been constructed another twenty yards inland.
How we got there and back: We were staying with Paul and Caroline in Isleham. We drove up to Hunstanton where we parked south of the town, not far from Tescoes. Then we walked up to the bus station and caught a bus to Thornham. There we walked through the back of the village to the wooden bridge on the coastal path, where we had ended the last Walk.
At the end, we walked up to our car from the seafront. We noticed that we had parked very near a chip shop which was open, and a nauseous smell of hot lard pervaded the atmosphere. Numerous cars stopped, and most times an obese woman alighted to buy the high-fat repast for the family while her bulbous bloke sat dragging at a cigarette with the engine running. We drank two cups of tea each, but didn’t touch our biscuits! Then we drove back to Isleham.

We crossed the wooden footbridge, and almost immediately we were passed by a man who breathlessly asked, “Have you seen the owl? I suppose you’ve come to see the whale!” Wow! On further questioning (he was reluctant to stop and chat) we elicited the information that there was a barn owl in the adjacent field and a dead whale on the beach. Then he rushed off. We looked over the hedge to our left—and there was the barn owl as clear as you like, sitting on a fence-post! Beautiful bird! Then we looked over the hedge to the right, and sure enough there was a dead whale way out on the beach! Colin wanted to photograph the owl, but I didn’t want to climb over barbed wire or scrabble through hedges, so I waited for him. I looked through my telescope towards the beach, and was amazed to see hundreds of people scurrying down there—for once we were not going to be on our own doing our coastal walk.

When Colin had had enough, we started following the crowds. Well, the snow of the past few days was on meltdown, the coast path was slippery as it was and it quickly turned into a quagmire. The path came out on to a tarmacked lane and we followed that for about a hundred yards—that was all right. Then we had to turn off again on to a grassy bank, and that was impossible because of all the people tramping along it. We had to walk along the bottom of the bank in the end, but many others had done the same and it was getting pretty slippery there too. Most people were inadequately dressed for the conditions, especially in the footwear department. It was bitingly cold in the wind, and many kids with thin coats, or even no coats, were crying and their parents cross. I shall never forget one little girl of about six being dragged along by her determined father. She was wearing her Sunday best—a long dress and pretty shoes all of which were covered in mud—which probably explains why she was sobbing her heart out. Poor little soul! Some youngsters, late teens to early twenties (you know, the age when they know-it-all) decided to take a short cut across the marshes. What a mess! They were up to their thighs in thick glutinous gunge and had great difficulty extricating themselves. They seemed oblivious to the danger of their situation, though all of them did get out safely in the end.We got to a point on the path where we were about two hundred yards from the carcass. The tide was right out, and a number of people had managed to get along the beach to where the whale had been washed up. It was lying on its side, yet it was still taller than the people surrounding it. We learned later that it was a forty foot pilot whale which had been washed ashore in a storm the night before and stranded by the ebbing tide—poor old thing! There were coastguards on the beach, more to keep an eye on the foolish elements amongst the throngs of people than to do anything with the whale. The RNLI had brought one of their very new state-of-the-art hovercrafts to the scene, and we believe that they were successful in dragging the body out to sea at the next high tide. Otherwise it would have been a very smelly beach for a few weeks!

We decided to continue with our Walk—we had seen enough, and when we looked back about twenty minutes later there were huge crowds surrounding the animal. You couldn’t get near it! On reaching the beach, we would have had to walk back on ourselves for about a mile to reach it, and we hadn’t got the time nor the inclination to add an extra two miles to our trek just to see a dead animal. So we continued westwards completely by ourselves on boardwalks across the dunes which were very nice to walk on. We found a bird-hide overlooking a pool in the marshes, so we sat in there out of the wind to eat our lunch.

The path led on through a pleasant little wood called ‘The Firs’, then out on the dunes again. Unfortunately there were no more boardwalks, so it wasn’t easy to walk where there was no grass. The sand got more and more loose, and I was looking longingly at the firm-looking sand on the beach below with the tide still a long way out. So when we came to a corner called ‘Gore Point’, I wanted to go down although there was a notice telling us not to. I went anyway, being careful to tread only in the footprints of people who had gone before. Colin reluctantly followed me, I think his legs were aching too!
We were down on wide expanses of sand, the like of which I had only dreamed of as a child on our pebbly South Coast beaches. The sand wasn’t as firm as we would have liked, but a deal better than the dunes we had left. The wind was against us and quite strong, so it was heads down and go for it! We trudged along for nearly two miles with barely a word spoken because we were putting all our effort into getting there.
As we approached Old Hunstanton, we came across more and more people on the beach, and many of them seemed to be walking in the opposite direction to us. A couple, probably in their sixties, asked us if we knew where the whale was, because they had heard about it on local radio (so that’s why so many people seemed to know about it!) When we told them how far it was, they began to lose interest, especially the woman! We advised them to get back in their car, drive to Thornham and approach it from there. The sand was so flat and wide, it was perfect for sand-yachting, and we had to be careful to avoid a number of these vehicles. It was a perfect day for it, with the strong wind, and everyone seemed to be having fun. I wouldn’t mind giving it a try sometime! There were also a number of kite-flyers out on the beach. Who says the beach is only good for the Summer months?
At last we reached Old Hunstanton, and the pub! It wasn’t far off the beach, we walked past the brand new RNLI hovercraft which had returned from the dead whale for the time being, and we were there. After a warm and a beer, we set off again. We had turned southwards because we had completed the walk along the ‘top’ of Norfolk. The sea to our right was ‘The Wash’, but it didn’t look any different because visibility was not good and we couldn’t see the other side.
We walked behind some beach huts, and then the ground began to rise as we walked along a green into Hunstanton. There were three fences barring off the cliff edge because it was crumbling away and they had to keep moving the path back. Lots of notices warned us about the dangerous cliff edge, but even so there was a bunch of flowers placed where someone had fallen or jumped off. We sat on a seat to eat our bars of chocolate, and a passing woman asked if we were sunbathing—eh?
There is a disused lighthouse on top of the cliff. I stood by it and said to Colin, “This sea you see before you is now The Wash. Over there—and I pointed into the mist—is the resort of Skegness which is at the other end of The Wash.” “How do you know Skegness is exactly in that direction?” he asked, scathingly. “Because I have studied the maps so intently in the planning of this trek that I know I’m right!” He still didn’t believe me, so he got out his compass and measured the angle in which I was pointing from the lighthouse. That evening, we got out Paul’s small scale map, which has the whole of The Wash on it, and put the compass on Hunstanton lighthouse. Colin was delighted to find I was 4º out. “Have you taken into account the magnetic variation?” asked Paul (my saviour!) He looked at the top of the map—“Ah! Magnetic variation, 4º West.” I had been exactly right!! Colin conceded, in fact he was so impressed that I could point out Skegness when I couldn’t even see the other coast that he kept mentioning it for days afterwards.

Near the lighthouse we came across the remains of an ancient chapel which had been dedicated to St Edmund, but I can’t remember the history of it—I am still crowing over the fact that, for once, I was right! We continued down on to the prom, and looked back at the cliffs. Red chalk? When I did my Open University degree in Geology (nearly twenty years ago now—gulp!) the only chalk I learnt about was very definitely white. Yet here were the ‘famous and unique red chalk cliffs of Hunstanton’ which I had never heard of even though I had minutely studied the Geology of the British Isles. Is it chalk stained with iron deposits, or is it something else? The cliffs looked very pretty with a white stripe along the top and a red stripe underneath. Colin wanted to look for fossils, but he didn’t find any in the little time we had to spare. There were lots of people taking the air, despite it being a cold Sunday in Winter. It was quite windy, but we kept to the prom and walked fast. We passed a ‘Sea Life Sanctuary,’ which used to be a Sea Life Centre but everything has to be conservation these days. I remember visiting it when it was new in 1990 during a camping holiday in Norfolk, and being enthralled by the variety of local fish they had in there. We passed the Winter storage yard of the local funfair, and it all looked rusty and worn. We wondered how much of it they actually use, because the equipment looked in need of more than just a coat of paint. We then passed a caravan park near where we had parked our car outside a chip shop, so we turned inland.

That ended Walk no.95, we shall pick up Walk no.96 next time at the caravan park on the southern edge of Hunstanton. We walked back to our car which was about a hundred yards away, and enjoyed two cups of hot tea each. Neither of us felt like any biscuits because of the nauseous smell of fat emanating from the chip shop, so we got in the car and drove back to Isleham where we were staying with Paul and Caroline.