This Week’s Walks
November 10th-16th, 2024
One of the things about writing these looks back at my activity is trying to remember what happened when. It’s not helped when the weather suddenly changes and I’m sitting here on a cold day when I’ve seen the first frost on the ground and seen the first reports of snow across England this year checking that my memories of surprisingly warm days were all from less than a week ago.
It was a quiet start to the week, some waking around town, but nothing of too much note or interest as I focused on getting some writing done before I went away for a couple of days. As it was still looking warm and dry, I’d decided to take another couple of days away in Jaffa, stretching out from one night’s camping to two, learning a bit more about the ways to use the van and discovering things I might want to add to it, or extra things I might need for longer trips.
This time, I headed up to Norfolk, where I’d found a nice-looking site at Two Mills, just outside North Walsham. It came with a friendly welcome, a nice hardstanding pitch, and now I had an additional cable, the chance to connect to mains power for the first time. All nice and comfortable, but you’re not here for caravan site reviews, are you?
I got there early on Thursday afternoon, which gave me enough time to wander across the fields and into North Walsham itself. A nice walk to unwind after the drive and a wander around the town. It’s a nice little rural town, a few interesting independent shops including the excellent Craft Bakery, which supplied me with some nice cake and a sausage roll for the next day’s exploring.
A good night’s sleep in the van followed, and the next morning I was ready for a decent walk, and so was the weather. A bit grey, but high clouds with no rain in the forecast, and no wind skittering off the north sea to chill the landscape. It turned into a surprisingly warm day as I walked, one where I’d sometimes forget it was November until I found myself in one of the long shadows where the low sun wasn’t warming things and be reminded it wasn’t that warm.
I’d decided to make my way to the coast, which was just a few miles way. There were plenty of paths and even a marked trail — the Weaver’s Way — that could take me there, but this stretch of coastline runs from north-west to south-east and I could see that the further south I strayed, the longer the distance to the coast would be. The Weaver’s Way, especially, looked a nice route, but appeared to take Zeno’s Paradox as it model for approaching the sea, continually getting closer, then finding another southbound stretch to save it off for a while.
That meant I only followed it for a short while, making my own way out through White Horse Common and Ebridge to Bacton Woods, then some back roads to Witton, stopping in an old church there, then back across the fields to Pollard Street and then heading across more fields to reach the sea at Bacton — which managed to be a couple of miles from the woods it shared a name with.
I’d done enough research to know that Bacton had a chip shop that would be open when I got there, so I had a surprisingly sunny lunch sitting and watching the relatively calm (and surprisingly blue) North Sea with chips, tea and the sausage roll I’d brought with me. It’s times like that, sitting and watching these great expanses of sand, sea and sky with almost no one else around that I realise how lucky I am to get the chance to do trips like this, and also to feel excited about the prospects of what I might discover on future trips.
I recently discovered the neologism kenopsia which describes the feeling of visiting a place that’s usually full of people but is currently empty, or near-empty. It originates in a dictionary of obscure sorrows, but I don’t find it a sorrowful feeling. For me, it’s an element of curiosity and discovery, a chance to peek behind the curtain and see the shape of things when the show isn’t being performed and understand the scale of the change when the people come. To see a beach like this, where I was sharing it only with a handful of dog walkers and a pair of women out for a bracing lunchtime dip in the North Sea, is a privilege rather than a sorrow.
And so, after I’d finished my lunch and sat there long enough to feel enough coolness in the air to remind me that yes, it was actually November, I took advantage of the tide being out to eschew the coast path and walk on the sand up to Mundesley. Again, I had the beach mostly to myself and when I got to Mundesley I got to watch a digger arranging rocks for a new set of sea defences before having to dash to get my bus back to North Walsham.
If you want to see more of the walk, then you’re in luck as I’m continuing on my video-making learning curve and it’s now on YouTube:
After another good night in the van — though one of the frustrations of travelling at this time of the year is how soon it gets dark, even when it’s not that cold — I got up and headed back into North Walsham for that week’s Parkrun, crossing off another location as well as getting an N for my Parkrun alphabet challenge. Now I just need a Q, a U, a Y and a Z to finish it, which means more travels to come! And more video from that trip, which I can get on creating now I’ve finished writing this.
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