“Not lovelier. But a different kind of loveliness. There are so many kinds of loveliness.”
– L M Montgomery, ‘The Blue Castle’
Just in case anyone is wondering, spring has not sprung; Norfolk is still brown; and it’s definitely still raining. Ugh. I watch the pictures of gorgeous, fluffy flakes of snow falling thickly over the Olympic venues and dream of proper winter, of frost and snow and ice. And then I glance out of the window and my dreams come squelching down around my ears, soaked through and dissipated by the ever-present, constant drizzle a Norfolk winter brings.
Despite the rain though, I managed to get out today for a very short walk. I’d been over to my local garden centre to pick up some compost; thinking about planting my veggie seeds for the summer is helping banish the blues, even if they’ll have to be inside seeds for the next little while. On the way back, I took a slight detour and stopped to take advantage of a short break in the weather. I’m not sure if it was beginning to get dark, or whether it was just the approaching clouds (it’s difficult to tell the difference), but it wasn’t what I’d call a cheerful afternoon whichever it was.
I meandered down the road from the car, splashing through puddles and marvelling at how much water the edges of the road can contain before it’s actually called a flood. I’d chosen to go and investigate a local ford. It’s not really on the way to anywhere, so not somewhere I’ve found myself for years. The road only leads to one of the entrances to the battleground* so nothing but army trucks ever fords the river. Probably a good job given the huge amounts of water currently swirling and gurgling its way along the (much wider than normal) river bed.
*There’s a huge area (30,000 acres) just down the road from me that’s been used for training by the army since 1942. They co-opted and evacuated six villages during WWII and created a huge training facility. Apparently, there’s all sorts of training areas within it, including barious villages used for urban warfare training. It’s the reason why living here is sometimes like living in downtown Beirut, with machine gun fire and circling helicopters all night, and occasional tanks when you go round corners on the surrounding roads. It was also the source of great confusion when, several years ago, myself and our Head of Year 7 sat down to work out the buses for transition week. We had a map, and just could not work out which high school half the villages sent their kids to. Turns out there were no kids and the battleground was not marked particularly obviously on the map …… oh, how the rest of the team laughed when we asked what was going on🤦♀️.
Anyway, the skies were grey, there was so much water hanging in the air that I really needed gills in place of lungs and I wasn’t feeling particularly inspired to take pictures. Everything was just so … monotone. But as I stomped up the road, surrounded by the drab brown of last year’s plants with their hanging leaves, I noticed something. Here and there, in and amongst those leaves were tiny flashes of orange and red. Despite the damp, despite the cold, despite the wind, a loveliness of ladybirds had tucked themselves in for the winter and still slumbered, one can only assume peacefully, in their beds.
Proof, that even on the darkest and most miserable of days, there’s always a scrap of something positive to be found.
“She left the hut and bright log fire at noon And walked outside on crisp white winter snow To find the iced slopes shadowed like the moon, The wild wood desolate and bare below; The red trees wet, adrift with icy flow, The evergreens with glassy needled leaves; A bloodstone veined red and white this view weaves.”
– Lynette Roberts, ‘Winter Walk’
A pied wagtail scurries across the garage forecourt, bobbing its head busily as it goes.
Tiny white flakes eddy and swirl in the air while snow is blown in dusty clouds from the top of the greenhouse. Pigeons jostle for a warmer position in the Leylandii.
Like a showgirl, the frosty pavement shimmers under the streetlights, silver lamé to brighten up my morning.
I discover that the French for pie chart is ‘camembert’ and resolve to use this at every opportunity!
Queues of golden raindrops glimmer along the washing line against a backdrop of red berries and grey skies.
A sudden flurry of wings outside the kitchen window draws my attention; a great tit pauses dramatically on the top of a garden cane, before fluttering away again.
Looking up, the tops of the Scots pines explode into the sky like fireworks.
Along the margins of the road, at all of the corners, is a thin line of squashed carrots, a timely reminder that this is Norfolk and it is winter.
The crescent moon sits like a jewel on the sumptuous blue velvet of the pre-dawn sky.
Pink smudges decorate the edges of the sky; the day clinging stubbornly to the last of its warmer temperatures.
Two kites circle vigilantly in the skies above us, their wings flicking and twisting to maintain their height.
Wind smashes against the building and periodic splatters of raindrops splash against the windows; it’s going to be a long day.
As I walk under the outspread branches of the maple tree, three pigeons take flight overhead; a sudden shower of raindrops pelts me. Stupid pigeons!
Revising Macbeth with my Year 11s, I left a quote on my board, “A little water clears us of this deed.” I come back later to find that someone has graffitied it with the words, “No, it doesn’t. Lol. ‘Out, damned spot'”
I am entertained.
Gulls scream raucously and enthusiastically from the roof of the Sports Hall during line-up, their voices drowning out the party line.
Thick mist wrapped tightly around the playing fields makes our building feel isolated; a small boat adrift in an endless sea of grey.
A song thrush trills and warbles derisively from the hedge as I hurry past.
“Late again,” he seems to say.
A squirrel bounds along, tail flying like a pennant behind it, sparrows flitter to and fro from the feeder to the hedgerow, and blackbirds splash in the puddles from last night’s rain. We’re all taking advantage of the bright morning sunshine.
“The tide is running out to sea Under a darkening sky The night is falling down on me And I’m thinking that I should
Head on home Head on home Been gone too long Gone too long Leave my roaming
Beachcombing”
– Mark Knopfler & Emmy-Lou Harris, ‘Beachcombing’
I know that technically not all of the photos in this post are of either flotsam* or jetsam°, although some of them might be, but I’m using the phrase in its more colloquial, less accurate, sense; random discarded bits and pieces.
*flotsam – debris in the water that was not deliberately thrown overboard, often the result of a shipwreck or accident. (NOAA)
°jetsam – debris that was deliberately thrown overboard by the crew of a ship in distress, often to lighten the load. (NOAA)
On Boxing Day, we decided we really needed a beach walk (I mean, is there ever a time when that’s not true?), but we really didn’t want to fight our way through crowds of people and dogs to find an empty stretch of sand on which to enjoy said walk. This criterion meant that Scremerston, Spittal, Lindisfarne, and Coldingham were all ruled out immediately. A decision was made that Eyemouth would be a more sensible option. We toyed with the idea of our usual circuit, starting at Gunsgreen House (the smugglers’ house), following the coastal path along the clifftop and then dropping down past the High School, but decided it was time for a change instead.
This time, we parked on the sea front (in the third empty carpark that we passed because mum isn’t capable of making an easy choice – yes, there was eye rolling aplenty!) and set off in the other direction, going North. It was remarkably quiet and as we made our way along the promenade to the bottom of the cliff path, we passed only a very few dog walkers, bundled up in scarves and hats against the wind. The first bit of the path was a steep climb up some very uneven steps. You know, the sort that are slightly too long to take one pace per step, but absolutely too short to comfortably take two, and also come in a variety of heights so you have to concentrate fully on what your feet are doing so you don’t faceplant which means you don’t have time to look around properly. Yeah, that sort! Luckily, the initial climb may have been steep, but it wasn’t long and we were soon on the grassy stretch that marks the site of Eyemouth Fort.
There may only be a series of ditches and mounds now (and two cannons), but this used to be a highly contested site. Built in 1547 by the English, it was originally part of the ‘Rough Wooing’ that attempted to break the Auld Alliance between Scotland and France and enforce a marriage contract between Mary Queen of Scots, and Edward, Henry VIII’s ill-fated son. Given that Mary was six days old when England attacked Scotland and started the war and Edward was six years old, one assumes they weren’t given a lot of choice in this! Not that it ever happened; Mary was spirited away to France where she was betrothed to (and eventually married, although not for very long!) the Dauphin Francis and Edward died aged fifteen.
The fort was first demolished in 1550 when the Treaty of Boulogne was signed three years after it was built. It was then rebuilt in 1557 by the French after the betrothal of Mary and Francis strengthened their alliance with Scotland. At this time it was seen as so formidable that the English had to build much bigger walls in Berwick to ensure the French stayed on the right side of the border. It didn’t last long though; it was re-demolished in 1559 after the Treaty of Cateau Cambrésis when France accepted Elizabeth I as the rightful Queen of England. As forts go, it doesn’t seem to have been that successful!
From the fort, the path ran along the top of the cliffs (with a couple of signposted detours to keep us as far away as possible from the top of those cliffs) past an immense number of memorial benches placed in areas where the view is more open. I perched at the top of a precipitous slope to take pictures of a sea pink, judiciously waiting until mum had vanished round the next twist in the path: she’s not a fan of edges and fun as it is to wind her up, this slope was maybe steep enough to be a step too far! I was amazed to see one that was actually in flower. The Wildlife Trust assures me that the normal flowering season is from April until July, although some flowers have been known to hang on until early autumn. Boxing Day is a mad date to see them on, but there they were.
Following the path round the bend, we found a long sloping path heading down to the beach. The beach was quite typical for this part of the world: lots of stark rocky outcroppings, carpeted with bladderwrack, buttercup-yellow snails crawled slowly amongst the strands. Limpets and barnacles adorned the rocks and, because the tide was low, the deep red jellytot blobs of sea anemones nestled in rock crevices, waiting for the return of their habitat. In the remaining pools of water, seaweed in green, almost black and bright red fanned out from holdfasts and swayed gently in the currents. Further up the beach, pebbles gave way to sand and, at the high tide mark, the sand to great heaping piles of debris swept in by recent storm surges.
Some of the debris was natural; driftwood, kelp strands with gnarled, carved holdfasts bleached butter yellow by wind and wave action, and always bladderwrack. Coffin box bryozoa (see previous post below) encrusted every surface of seaweed it could and the tiny bone white curls of Spirorbis tube worm shells were scattered like glitter across the wide straps of serrated wrack.
Mixed in with the natural debris was the true flotsam and jetsam: ropes, nets, crab pots, rusted metal … and shoes. Many, many shoes. There are always shoes on Scottish beaches. And Northumbrian ones for that matter. From the number of them we’ve found over the years, you’d assume that not a single Scot owned a full pair of shoes, but this hasn’t been the case in my experience. Where do they all come from? Why are they almost invariably left shoes (according to extensive, if slightly dubious given her approach to lefts and rights, research carried out by mum)?
A scrap of red yarn resolved itself into an exhausted Santa, face down in the pebbles and looking like he’d had a very good Christmas.
As the afternoon started to draw in, we climbed up the long slope, back up to the clifftop path and wended our way back to the town centre and the car. In the time we’d been out, everyone else seemed to have followed our example; both the carpark and the sea front were now hotching with people. Definitely time for a judicious retreat.
“There may be a great fire in our soul, yet no one ever comes to warm himself at it, and the passers-by see only a wisp of smoke.”
– Vincent Van Gogh
Another quick one … life is busy at this point in the year (and the term) what with Christmas and its inevitable celebrations, birthdays, parents evenings, garage appointments (My car has decided that it’s not satisfied with any of its tyres or the oil it currently has!!) and baking.
I did manage to carve out a couple of hours for a wander at Wretham yesterday though. It had been cold overnight with a light frost, but the morning was fresh, clear and very sunny (I’m pretty sure I still have small purple dazzles in front of my eyes as I’m writing this!).
As I walked down through the first section of forest, sun rays shining through the trees were illuminating the wisps of mist that remained and punctuating them with thousands of tiny starbursts emanating from the dew drops that hung from every twig. It was like walking through a magical land … or at least it would have been, if not for the many, many, dirt bikers that had chosen to make it their playground for the morning.
As I walked, I was convinced my eyes were playing tricks on me; I kept catching flashes of movement in my peripheral vision but when I turned, there was nothing there. Was I seeing the movement of birds in the undergrowth? Faeries dancing in the mist? Animals scurrying for cover?
It was only when I reached a more open area that I realised that it was the condensation from the melting frost boiling off in the sunlight. Curls of smoke lifted from the bright embers of the bracken, twisting and dancing in the air before dissipating into sunbeams. I watched, entranced by the sight and lulled into immobility by the movement.
Shaking myself from my trance, I continued on down the path to see what other treasures I could find.
“Roads? Who spoke of roads? We go by the moor and the hills, and tread granite and heather as the Druids did before us.”
– Daphne du Maurier, ‘Jamaica Inn’
You know how this goes … as soon as I see an annotation on a map that looks interesting, there’s nothing else to be done until I’ve been to have a look in real life. It’s a rule. And if I’m honest, it’s never steered me wrong! I mean, sure, sometimes what I find is a bit underwhelming, but the journey to look has always been a good experience. Who was it that said, “it’s not the destination, its the journey”? Ralph Waldo Emerson, I think. And he was right; the experience of going somewhere is the best bit. The bit when you’ve arrived is just icing on the cake.
This time, the annotation read ‘Nine Stones Stone Circle’ … in that weird, slightly illegible Gothic script the Ordnance Survey uses for such annotations. Nearby, there was a note of ‘Crow Stones’ and a ‘Cairn’. Was there any doubt? Of course we were going to explore.
We set off on a sunny-ish day. Honestly, that’s really the best you can hope for in Scotland at this time of year. It isn’t actively hammering down so we count it as a good day and head on out. We drive up in to the Lammermuirs, along roads covered in drifts of sunshine yellow larch needles and flanked by gloriously autumnal beeches. The roads in the Borders are frequently lined with both beech trees and beech hedges, and at this end of the year, they are showing at their absolute best. When the sun hits the leaves, they glow fiercely like banked embers about to burst into fresh flames. I constantly want to stop and take photos, but am categorically told that this is not the road to stop on! I’ll admit that there are some elements of left and right, up and down that might render such actions more dangerous than sensible, but there’s hardly any traffic ….
Meandering past Whiteadder reservoir, I marvel at how low the water level is. Last time I remember coming up this way, the water levels were much higher, with the road going over a wide stretch of water as it rounded the final bend. Today, there’s barely a trickle running beneath us as we round the same bend, testament to exactly how warm and dry the summer was this year. Even in Scotland.
The road climbs further up in to the hills. Despite the multitude of signs that tell us to drive carefully because of the wildlife on the road, the most we see are pigeons, rooks, pheasants, and partridges. All of which eventually remove themselves from the road, but do it in very different ways at totally different speeds. The rooks launch skywards lazily at the first sight of us rounding the bend. The pigeons lurk in the corners, almost perfectly camouflaged against the tarmac until the very last second when they explosively flap up across the road in front of the car. I jump every time and mutter curses. The pheasants, as they always do, dither indecisively on the verges, never knowing if they’ve made the right choice of direction. Sometimes, they make a last second sprint for the other side; risking life and limb because they can’t make up their minds. The partridges panic as the car approaches and fly, en masse, along the road in front of us before settling back in the carriageway and looking relieved … until they notice that we’re still there and repeat the whole process. Idiot things.
We follow the road up and down as it traverses hills and crosses burns. Or at least the spaces where burns will be in a couple of weeks of slightly soggy weather conditions. The signposted ford is conspicuous in its absence for the moment though. Probably for the best. We drive upwards until we reach Johnscleugh and a convenient pull-in at the bottom of a grassy track that leads even more upwards onto the moor. The bracken up here has faded to a burnished bronze, the heather is a deep chocolate brown and the shaggy grass is tipped with gold. The sky above us is mostly grey, with occasional patches of a pale, watery blue. It’s eyewateringly cold (at least to me, who may have developed some slightly soft southerner tendencies) and I fasten myself into my big coat while giving thanks for the thermal undershirt I actually remembered to wear.
As we stomp briskly up the hill, hands buried deep in our pockets, and shoulders hunched to keep our collars up round our ears, I’m startled by an odd sound. Glancing up quickly, I see a black grouse whirring away over the hill. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a grouse before (Scotch whisky ads excluded), and I certainly haven’t ever heard their call. Who knew they sounded like small, angry dogs?!
Its blowing a hoolie up here, the wind finding every tiny gap in my clothing, and making it much harder to get up the hill than it really needs to be. Some of the lower clouds bring a spattering of rain that beats against our faces and makes the temperature feel much colder than it really is. We’re not entirely sure which path will get us to the circle, so we’re working on instinct now. We know that it’s supposed to be just down from the summit so we follow a right hand fork that runs upwards. I’m assuming that the circle should be fairly obvious. I mean, they’re standing stones … how hard can they be to find?
Turns out that the answer to that question is “very, very difficult”. We quarter the hillside, wading through hip high heather and scanning in all directions for any sign of stone. Who knew that heather grew that tall?* It’s incredibly springy and tries to throw you on the floor if you step on it wrong. I’m also having a dawning realisation that it could quite happily swallow up quite sizeable stones without noticeable effort. Maybe this is a fools errand. There are cleared patches (I’m assuming grouse management) filled with the twisted, bleached skeletons of heather plants. They’re oddly stone coloured from a distance, and trick us more than once. We find some pictures on a website describing the site and resort to lining up pylons and coverts of conifers on the far hillside. Left a bit. Right a bit. Uphill. Downhill.
*Even looking at my photos, it’s difficult to believe that it’s so deep, but I promise you, looks can be very deceiving!!
After almost forty five minutes of searching, we finally get a tiny glimpse of stone. We gallop downhill towards it, and find our goal just a few feet away from a track. If we’d only stayed on the original path instead of forking off and climbing to higher ground, we’d have found the stones within minutes. Oops!
The circle is more of a jagged oval of nine stones that are fifty to sixty centimetres high. There are a couple of larger ones that may have fallen and are now lying on their sides in the rough grass. We can’t work out why the circle is sited here; it’s not on the top of the hill where I expected it to be. It’s tucked into the lee of the slope and apparently not particularly visible from any distance. Why was it here? Who put it here? What was it for? When was it placed?
Most of these questions remain unanswered; the best I can do on dates is that Trove.scot has it listed as prehistoric, possibly Neolithic or Bronze Age. An index card from Historic Environment Scotland (dated to 1958) records evidence of uneven digging in the centre of the circle, while another references a historic source (from 1853) which states that “it is believed that some treasure is hidden beneath these stones and various attempts, all unsuccessful, have been made to find it.” Sadly, that’s the sum of the information I can find. Nothing further about the nature of the treasure and from where the story originated. Just enough to make it interesting, but not enough to clarify. In my head, ghostly processions of people wend their way slowly up the slope, bundled in cloaks, to celebrate the turning of the seasons and to watch the stars turning above the hillside.
Having spent so long searching for the circle, we decide not to go looking for the Crow Stones today; they’re supposed to be much closer to Kingside Burn and we aren’t sure we wanted our feet to get any wetter. They’re also supposed to be even shorter stones and the heather isn’t getting any shorter towards the bottom of the hill! We decide to quit while we’re ahead and turn our faces back towards the car. Somehow, we’re still walking into the wind. I don’t know how that’s possible, but it’s certainly true. Grouse are still barking at intervals, starting up furiously from the undergrowth as we pass.
We reach the car with chilled faces and hands. Have we got time for one more exploration before we head home? There’s an annotation on the map just up the road that looks like it might be fun ….
“The wind outside nested in each tree, prowled the sidewalks in invisible treads like unseen cats.”
– Ray Bradbury, ‘The Halloween Tree’
Pigeons scatter across the car park like unruly children.
Amongst the fiery oranges and reds of autumn, a single pink rose blooms on a tall stem.
Huddled in a corner, above a doorway, a bat slumbers deeply, oblivious to the mobs of children that pass beneath it all day.
Two geese gossip their way across the leaden skies.
As I turn on the Angers match, a raging torrent of French is unleashed; tumbling and bouncing between consonants, my brain frantically tries to make sense of at least some of the words.
Man, French people talk FAST!!
Crouched beneath an oak tree, photographing fungi, I am brutally bombarded with acorns.
I look up at line-up to see Dylan holding a piece of card from which a gigantic orb-weaver spider dangles. For one brief moment, I believe it to be a Halloween figurine …. until it wriggles. He grins as I order him to put it on the grass and leave it there.
Fog lies heavy across the field, illuminated from above by golden sunlight.
Ivy stems, mottled brown and grey, slither like serpents along the trunks of the fallen trees.
Autumn snowflakes fall in flurries, forming gold drifts in the darkness of the forest floor.
Above the chaos of the M62, a kestrel hangs, adjusting the angle of its wings in minute increments; an oasis of calm in an increasingly frantic space.
Beech leaves glow like banked embers against the ashy-grey skies above.
Long skeins of geese unravel untidily across the evening sky, their noise flapping along behind them.
The house is surrounded by a blank curtain of grey, as if someone pulled down a blind to cover the view.
Startled by what sounds like the barking of an irritated dog, I look up, only to see two black grouse whirring away across the hillside.
Larch needles lie in thick drifts along the edges of the road; sunshine cushions against the encroaching cold.
A startlingly bright rainbow arches across the charcoal sky, echoed faintly by a second inverted arch to one side.
In the thermals above the A1, a buzzard soars in lazy circles to gain height.
“Know’st thou not at the fall of the leaf How the heart feels a languid grief Laid on it for a covering, And how sleep seems a goodly thing In Autumn at the fall of the leaf?”
– Dante Gabriel Rossetti, ‘Autumn Song’
Just at the point that I’m beginning to admit autumn might be happening, it seems other denizens of this area are ready to move on to the next thing. I always feel like I’m a couple of steps behind.
I was wandering round Cranwich Heath this afternoon; I’d gone to visit the grove of eucalypts that are planted along one of the oaths, but was dismayed to find that they don’t seem to be doing as well as they once were. There’s a fair number that appear to have died, although some groves are thriving. Weird!
About half way round the loop, I was poking around in the leaf litter to look for sweet chestnuts (that hadn’t been got by the maggots), amethyst deceivers (to photograph, not eat), and anything else interesting that might present itself.
Spotting the fallen stump of a good size tree, I wandered over to see what shapes* it had to offer. I was charmed to discover that tucked away in the cracks and crevices formed in the wood, were multiple lovelinesses of ladybirds. Seven-spot ladybirds, I think. Not that I wanted to disturb their slumber by trying to count spots! Huddled together in large groups, they were surprisingly difficult to spot at a distance.
*Is it just me who thinks that after a bit of weathering, tree stumps can look an awful lot like bones?
As I walked on, I had an entire mental debate about how on earth a ladybird chooses its spot to hibernate … mostly because these particular spots didn’t look especially cozy to me. There’s an awful lot of each beetle sticking out round the edges. Would this not be like that awful moment when you’re snuggling down in bed and somehow there’s a gap in the duvet letting in a cold breeze that you can neither locate, nor remove? Eternally cold feet? Perhaps ladybirds are hardier than me?
On the other hand, they get to sleep the winter away instead of braving the cold, so maybe they’re not as hardy as they first appear. Perhaps diapause is better than the thickest, fluffiest duvet.
“Whoever you are, no matter how lonely, the world offers itself to your imagination, calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting– over and over announcing your place in the family of things.”
– Mary Oliver, ‘Wild Geese’
As we got to the end of our walk at Sutton Bridge, we discovered that the track we’d been walking along was marked ‘Private’ at this end. It hadn’t been at the other end. It’s always slightly disconcerting when that happens; I don’t want to walk where I’m not supposed to, but signs (or lack thereof) don’t always support me in this quest!
Anyhoo, as we got back to the lighthouse carpark, we scared up a herd of geese. Herd? Flock? I just looked this up and discovered that, as well as the standard ‘gaggle’ of geese, there are a number of slightly more interesting alternatives. I quite like a gagelynge* of geese, or maybe a cackling** of geese. Even a sute¤ of geese sounds more intriguing. Of course, as soon as they became airborne, I had to choose from a different list. A much shorter list. Basically, either a skein or a wedge.
* Can be used to denote either a group of geese or a group of gossiping women.
** Not sure these geese were cackling so much as making a noise reminiscent of an old, rusty hinge that hasn’t been oiled in decades.
¤ a Middle English word forming the root of the modern word suite.
Clearly, they weren’t a wedge. Nothing so organised for these birds. I did, however, rather like the idea of a skein … mostly because the word always reminds me of when my sister first learned to knit. She was slightly overenthusiastic and decided that knitting direct from a skein of wool would be absolutely fine. Anyone who has ever knitted anything will tell you that knitting direct from the skein is a disaster waiting to happen. And not waiting very long, at that. She started well, and within ten minutes, was on the phone to me bewailing the giant tangle of yarn that was currently wrapped around her chair, her feet, her needles, and (quite possibly) the cat. It’s one of those lessons that all knitters have learned at one point or another … you have to wind the yarn into balls before you can start your project. Patience is (as it is with so many other things) key. And possibly a virtue.
Having formed their messy, tangled, impossible to untangle skein, these geese circled overhead, waiting for us to leave. And they circled. Again and again and again. It was as if, having made the decision to take to the skies, they were unable to break the cycle. They circled overhead, sweeping over the trees, rounding the lighthouse, dipping low over the river. Before doing it all over again.
With a bit of Googling, I think they’re Barnacle Geese (Branta leucopsis), but I’m very willing to be corrected if I’m wrong. I also love the fact that they were named because of the belief that they hatched from Goose Barnacles. I mean, why wouldn’t they?
“To stand at the edge of the sea, to sense the ebb and flow of the tides, to feel the breath of a mist moving over a great salt marsh, to watch the flight of shore birds that have swept up and down the surf lines of the continents for untold thousands of years, to see the running of the old eels and the young shad to the sea, is to have knowledge of things that are as nearly eternal as any earthly life can be.”
– Rachel Carson
The Wash is the largest natural bay in England. Just north of King’s Lynn, it is bordered by several National Nature Reserves, huge areas of mud flats, an AoNB, and an MoD air weapons training area. Yes, that last one is a little incongruous, but round here, it seems fairly normal (We have a lot of air bases, both British and American!). Despite having lived in Norfolk for quite a while, I’d never really explored the western end of the Wash, so we decided to head up in that direction for a quick wander. While I was trying to work out how to access the big empty space on the map, I came across something that immediately had me hooked.
Why was there a weird doughnut shaped feature on the map? What was it? Was it an error? Clearly, I had to find out.
My first port of call, as it usually is, was Google. And it paid off handsomely. The doughnut is actually called the Outer Trial Bank and is an artificial island built by the British government in 1974. The idea was that they would construct a tidal barrage across the Wash, collect fresh water from the Rivers Withal, Welland, Nene, and Great Ouse, and build a freshwater reservoir. My mind is a little boggled by this … I can’t really work out what they wanted to achieve. Surely, if you wanted to build a freshwater reservoir, it would make more sense to do it on land. Where the water is fresh and not saline. Where it would be a relatively simple process to dig a reservoir (with the use of some civil engineering, obviously). Where you weren’t trying to do the whole thing while mired in deep, sticky mud. Surely.
The island itself is 250m across, with a small 1 hectare reservoir in its centre. It cost £3 million to build and was completely unsuccessful. Apparently, it wasn’t possible to ensure that the water maintained low salinity levels* or minimal silt levels. The project was abandoned very shortly after building was completed.
*When the reservoir was surrounded by the sea. Who knew??
On the other hand, the island now sits within a nature reserve and provides undisturbed nesting space for around three thousand seabirds. I’d count that as a win. Not quite the win that was planned, but a creditable win nevertheless.
We turned off just before Sutton Bridge on a road I’d never noticed before, and followed a very narrow, bumpy road out to a pair of bright white disused lighthouses that stand sentry on either side of the River Nene.
Parking the car, we set out down a grassy path along the banks of the river and up onto the tidal embankment. It was about this time that the sheer flatness of the area started to seep into my mind. Living in Norfolk, I count myself an expert on surviving without hills, but this is something else entirely. The horizon is unapologetically, well, horizontal. The wide expanse of sky seems to extend further than is possible, hanging overhead with solemn solidity, rather than as an ethereal space. It was a pale blue, streaked with misty white clouds. The wind showed no mercy, blowing steadily across the flats and stopping for nothing, least of all us. Grassy flats stretched out towards the distant water, cut through with creeks and drainage ditches. A little egret hunkered down next to one of them, a slip of white against the grass. Skylarks sang noisily in the sky above. The green shoots of Alexanders formed messy patches of darker green in the grass, and the sun shone, glittering bright on water, making me squint.
As we walked, several egrets flew up, seeming to appear from nowhere before flapping heavily across the grassy expanse. I’ve never understood the impulse that wild things have to start up, even when they have clearly not been discovered or threatened. I guess when it’s literally life or death, you have more of a ‘better safe than sorry’ approach.
The island was in view as we walked out. Like some alien spaceship, it floated, low on the horizon. We could never really see any clear details, but given that it’s a mile and a half out at sea**, that’s not entirely surprising. We could see some kind of structure at the closest edge, maybe a landing place. I mean, someone must have had to land on it to test the water quality, I suppose.
** I know the map makes it look like it’s on the beach, but out here, the boundaries between land and water are blurred, bringing new meaning to the word liminal.
We circled back round to the car park, following a farm track bordered by a line of trees. A wren took exception to our presence and spent a good ten minutes leapfrogging us so it was best placed to yell at us about our audacity in walking past. The car was blessedly warm, although it took the whole distance back to Kings Lynn for my fingers to defrost.
“Life is infinitely stranger than anything which the mind of man could invent.”
– Arthur Conan Doyle, ‘A Case of Identity‘
Duty days are brutal. There I am, standing in the middle of the tennis courts, giant padded coat zipped all the way from my knees to my nose. My hands are stuffed deep into my pockets, and my shoulders are hunched so high up around my ears that they’re in danger of meeting above my head. It is, in a word, cold. The Year 7s and 8s wander around me in ones and twos, combining and recombining into small groups. Still small children at heart, they spend time chasing each other around and shrieking.
“It’s so cold, miss,” Izzy calls out as she passes. I agree. It really is. I point out that she would perhaps be warmer if she was, in fact, wearing her coat rather than just hugging it. She grins, shrugs, and wanders off.
As I look around the tennis courts, it dawns on me that this seems to be the new thing. Barely any of them are wearing the coats that their parents have provided. They all have their hands holding the hood, the body and arms of the coat dangling uselessly in front of them, flapping in the icy breeze. And all of them look absolutely freezing! It’s only the little ones; by the end of Year 9, they seem to have rediscovered the joy of sleeves and insulation. The Year 10s and 11s wouldn’t be caught dead freezing their butts off while lugging around their own salvation. (I mean, I sometimes feel that they’re unhealthily attached to their scarves, but that’s a whole different story.) It’s just weird. Why aren’t they wearing them properly?
I am entirely aware that, as an adult, I am utterly incapable of understanding the motivation of children … my job does a very good job of making this clear to me on a daily basis. But this refusal to help themselves seems particularly strange, even by their standards.
Strange creatures, children. But they keep life interesting.
absolutelynotnormal 