To spare myself a couple of miles walk in the morning I decide to wait for the Southwold ferry to start working at 10 am, to get me quickly to Walberswick, the village on the other side of the harbour. Three others make the crossing across with me, along with the burly ferryman who takes my 90p fare. The other three, all in their sixties I guess, stop at a boatshed on the other side where a champagne breakfast is being served with a dozen other privileged morning boozers. Old school Tory hardcore!
Feeling fit and looking forward to the days walk, I march a few hundred yards down the path along the harbour and the boozy old tories in the boatshed, admiring the boats, moorings and curious shacks and sheds. “I’m on track”, I think to myself, all satisfied. Moments later, I think again. This is the path going back to Southwold, it’s going back the way I would have come if I had taken the longer route before the ferry started work. I stop and turn round towards the coast, NOW I‘m on track.
But soon I get lost again. The right path takes you out across a wooden bridge where children dangle bait to catch crabs for their buckets, then out across the grass and shingle towards the shore. Then the path becomes unclear, in the absence of the blue markers I don’t know whether to go along the shore or cut inland. I decide to go into the village to re-orientate myself. Still not clear, I ask for directions from a sprightly lady out jogging with two dogs who is coming out onto the road from a footpath. My map shows me the Suffolk Coast Path takes you to a windmill, and so I ask her if this path goes to the windmill. She confirms it can, if I keep bearing off towards the sea, and so on I go.
The path goes past some allotments and then through farm land, and I pick up the Suffolk Coast Path markers again on the edge of the huge expanse of reeds and marshland that comprises the Westwood and Dingle Marshes, with Dunwich Forest in the distance. The conic rust red brick tower that was once a windmill can be seen ahead, sans sails. The path follows a water dyke all the way up to it. I stop to photograph hoverflies feasting on the yellow wild flowers growing by the path, which is another of those wooden platform over the marsh arrangements that traversed the “rough walking“ yesterday. My camera seems to be recovering now, but the autofocus refuses to work. In the far distance, I can see the white dome of the Sizewell B nuclear reactor further down the coast. Only about 6 ½ miles away as the seagull flies, but at least half as far again by the path. My campsite tonight is a little beyond in Sizewell village.
Feeling fit and looking forward to the days walk, I march a few hundred yards down the path along the harbour and the boozy old tories in the boatshed, admiring the boats, moorings and curious shacks and sheds. “I’m on track”, I think to myself, all satisfied. Moments later, I think again. This is the path going back to Southwold, it’s going back the way I would have come if I had taken the longer route before the ferry started work. I stop and turn round towards the coast, NOW I‘m on track.
But soon I get lost again. The right path takes you out across a wooden bridge where children dangle bait to catch crabs for their buckets, then out across the grass and shingle towards the shore. Then the path becomes unclear, in the absence of the blue markers I don’t know whether to go along the shore or cut inland. I decide to go into the village to re-orientate myself. Still not clear, I ask for directions from a sprightly lady out jogging with two dogs who is coming out onto the road from a footpath. My map shows me the Suffolk Coast Path takes you to a windmill, and so I ask her if this path goes to the windmill. She confirms it can, if I keep bearing off towards the sea, and so on I go.
The path goes past some allotments and then through farm land, and I pick up the Suffolk Coast Path markers again on the edge of the huge expanse of reeds and marshland that comprises the Westwood and Dingle Marshes, with Dunwich Forest in the distance. The conic rust red brick tower that was once a windmill can be seen ahead, sans sails. The path follows a water dyke all the way up to it. I stop to photograph hoverflies feasting on the yellow wild flowers growing by the path, which is another of those wooden platform over the marsh arrangements that traversed the “rough walking“ yesterday. My camera seems to be recovering now, but the autofocus refuses to work. In the far distance, I can see the white dome of the Sizewell B nuclear reactor further down the coast. Only about 6 ½ miles away as the seagull flies, but at least half as far again by the path. My campsite tonight is a little beyond in Sizewell village.
 |
| Westwood Marshes |
Past the sail-less windmill the path curves on with the dyke. A woman cycles by with an easel, and I catch her up a little way on where she stops to set up and paint. I go through a gate with a grassy patch, near a wood, and stop for a while to take advantage of a soft dry place to sit. With two lifeless trees standing nearby the spot is like a set for Beckett’s Waiting For Godot . The weather is overcast but warm and kind. I wait, and wait, and no-one comes. Carrying on, I pass three pyres of twisted branches, side by side. Are they bonfires to be, or some kind of modern rustic sculpture?
 |
| Dingle Marshes |
At Dunwich Forest the path weaves in and out on the forest’s edge. It’s a solid track fit for cars and tractors. Blackberries grow on the brambles along the path. I have planned to harvest wild fruit on my journey where I can, but by and large most blackberries till now have not been ripe. These brambles offer more in the way of ripe fruit, but they are well protected not only by their own thorns, but by the nettles that surround them. With my heavy pack, I am careful not to over-balance and tip myself into the brambles, which would have nasty and undignified consequences. Despite the obstacles, there is a percentage of the fruit that can be reached, ripe and good.
The church of Dunwich appears ahead. A group walk past including a spotty teenager with a Human League Dare T-shirt, which inspires me to muse upon what made the Sheffield electropop band so great.
Arriving in the town, I go past Dunwich church, then the museum, then the pub. I feel I should visit the museum because the history of Dunwich is fascinating, but everywhere is busy with tourists and cars and kids and mums and dads. I grumpily consume an over-priced pastie at the beach café where Lobster Thermidor and Sea Bass are also served. The food looks good but the prices and the middle class people irritate me. A mother calls for her son, “Saul! Saul”. What kind of heathen pre-christian name is Saul, for goodness sake? Saul!
Wanting to leave the crowds behind, I do Dunwich the injustice perhaps of leaving it behind to get back on the path. It is a short walk to the dramatic ruin of Dunwich Greyfriars friary, enclosed by an ancient wall in a field. With all the people I saw at the Dunwich beach café, not a single one has ventured here. What do these people come for? Just to drive from place to place, from meal to meal, and then drive on?
 |
| Dunwich Greyfriars |
The ruins are of a 13th Century Franciscan Friary. In it’s day there were 14 other chapels and churches in Dunwich, but many would have been destroyed when storms and sea surges in 1286 and 1328 swept away large parts of the town, which was then a major sea port and the capital of East Anglia, literally washing large chunks of land and everything standing on it into the sea.
The path goes on through residential parts and then through the southern tip of Dunwich Forest, and then to the National Trust sign for Dunwich Heath, Mount Pleasant Farm. Underneath the sign another plaque says “PURCHASED WITH THE HELP OF PIZZA EXPRESS CUSTOMERS THROUGH THE NEPTUNE COASTLINE CAMPAIGN”. Quite what they helped to buy is not made clear. Ahead of me, two walkers are consulting their map. I ask if they are OK, and I‘m reminded that Sebald got lost here. Standing in the centre of it, it is easy to see why; you are in a beautiful bowl of pastel coloured heather, mainly mauve with sprinklings of yellow (ling, I believe), and the horizon appears essentially the same in whatever direction you look. You cannot see the sea, you cannot see any hills in the distance, or buildings or other landmarks; all you can see is undulating heather bowl with a lining of trees at the edge. I stop for a while in the middle and take photographs to provide evidence of the fact. It is also a lovely peaceful place to stop, and the smattering of walkers who come by and chat to me all agree.
The path goes on through residential parts and then through the southern tip of Dunwich Forest, and then to the National Trust sign for Dunwich Heath, Mount Pleasant Farm. Underneath the sign another plaque says “PURCHASED WITH THE HELP OF PIZZA EXPRESS CUSTOMERS THROUGH THE NEPTUNE COASTLINE CAMPAIGN”. Quite what they helped to buy is not made clear. Ahead of me, two walkers are consulting their map. I ask if they are OK, and I‘m reminded that Sebald got lost here. Standing in the centre of it, it is easy to see why; you are in a beautiful bowl of pastel coloured heather, mainly mauve with sprinklings of yellow (ling, I believe), and the horizon appears essentially the same in whatever direction you look. You cannot see the sea, you cannot see any hills in the distance, or buildings or other landmarks; all you can see is undulating heather bowl with a lining of trees at the edge. I stop for a while in the middle and take photographs to provide evidence of the fact. It is also a lovely peaceful place to stop, and the smattering of walkers who come by and chat to me all agree.
 |
| Dunwich Heath |
 |
| Dunwich heather |
Unlike Sebald and the walkers, I have the benefit of having stayed on the Coastal Path, and I keep my bearings. I leave the heath and head coastwards, the ground still covered with the thick mauve heather. On the right, the doomy presence of Sizewell B looms larger. Ahead is a white building, a visitor centre near the cliffs, and from there it is a very straight path going to Sizewell along a sea wall. Inland there are extensive broads and I stop at a bird hide to rest up and look at the birds. With the help of a running commentary courtesy of a father and child sharing the hide with me, I identify a some redshanks, avocets, and a lonely cape shelduck which, not a British native, must have escaped from some private collection somewhere.
 |
| Sizewell ahead |
Past a sluice there is still a couple of miles to go to Sizewell. As I approach the dome of the Sizewell B power station I laugh to myself as I imagine it exploding Monty Python style in front of me, leaving a shattered humpty dumpty egg shell smouldering by the shore. Eventually I near the plant. I’ve learnt already on my trip that a Sizewell C is being planned, and I go past a large fenced off piece of land marked “construction site” for which this is presumably intended. There is a grey stone ramp going up into the site, with a Suffolk Coastal District Council Public Notice pinned to it, proposing “retention of temporary hard r…[word illegible - ramp, road?] for a maximum period of three years”. Not the planning permission notice for a nuclear power station I was hoping to find exactly, but I know it is increasingly likely that it will be built.
Sizewell B is a working pressurised water reactor, Britain’s newest in fact, and the white dome is something of a futuristic adornment, encasing the twin-walled concrete containment building that protects the pressurised water reactor and its steam generators. Outside you hear a sound similar to that of distant jet engines at an airport. Whether this is the sound of the reactor itself, or of ventilators, or something else, I don’t know.
Sizewell A is next along the path, an old school magnox generator decommissioned in the 90s. It’s huge brutalist concrete presence is in some ways more impressive than that of Sizewell B, it reminds me of the the National Theatre on the South Bank in London.
Sizewell B is a working pressurised water reactor, Britain’s newest in fact, and the white dome is something of a futuristic adornment, encasing the twin-walled concrete containment building that protects the pressurised water reactor and its steam generators. Outside you hear a sound similar to that of distant jet engines at an airport. Whether this is the sound of the reactor itself, or of ventilators, or something else, I don’t know.
Sizewell A is next along the path, an old school magnox generator decommissioned in the 90s. It’s huge brutalist concrete presence is in some ways more impressive than that of Sizewell B, it reminds me of the the National Theatre on the South Bank in London.
 |
| Sizewell A |
At Sizewell there’s a car park and a café and up on the rising cliff ahead is the “club house” of Cliff House Park, which I booked by phone yesterday while I was in Southwold. The club house is a white painted building that provides a home for the people who run the site, and a bar, restaurant and basement games (ping pong, bar football etc) room for the kids. Paying my money in the reception/bar I am given a red metal putting green flag with the number “37” on it to mark my tent, and they tell me I can camp anywhere. I pitch up under trees at the far end of the camping field, near a few German family campers.
Weary, I go back to the club house hoping to be able to sit in comfort in the restaurant conservatory for the rest of the evening. I negotiate a cheese, ham and tomato toastie ten minutes after 6pm when hot food ceases to be served. A £4 a toastie, I’m not sure who is doing whom a favour here.
Anyway, I’m sat in the window, with my beer and my food, and I’m making a few notes in my book, and taking in the partial sea view. My hopes of settling into this comfortable spot for the evening are dashed however, because Saturday night is bingo night here at Cliff House Park, and the limited number of tables are quickly filling up (with the exception of mine) by players old and young (mainly old) anticipating a possible full house and a high old time. I’m asked if I want to play. Declining, I decide I’d better shift myself and give up my table for those queuing up to play. Relocated outside on the veranda with my Adnams under a gazebo, I listen to the bingo caller commence the game, played with playing cards instead of numbers, “Jack of Hearts, Ten of Spades, Seven of Heart…” etc, etc. The first winner calls “house!”. The next game commences. Soon the game inspires hysterical laughter from some participants, which is repeated, variously and periodically, by others. Don’t tell me bingo isn’t any fun; I’ve heard ‘em playing it, and it’s hilarious, apparently.
The game finally done, it’s time for an old time singalong. They’ve got one of those old 70s electic organ in the club house, and some old feller is squeezing out all the cockney favourites; “My Old Man”, “The Old Bull and Bush”, “I do like to be beside the seaside”, “The Lambeth Walk“, “Maybe It‘s Because I‘m A Londoner“, the list goes on and on and on, and it’s amazing how many of them I know all the words to, like a race memory. In the background, the Sizewell B reactor no doubt hums along. Funny, I started the day on a rowing boat taking a select few to the Southwold conservatives’ boathouse champagne breakfast, now I’m sitting here listening in on the working class bingo and caravan club cockney knees-up. Where am I in all this? I am a watching and I am a listening. And I ain’t nowhere.
Weary, I go back to the club house hoping to be able to sit in comfort in the restaurant conservatory for the rest of the evening. I negotiate a cheese, ham and tomato toastie ten minutes after 6pm when hot food ceases to be served. A £4 a toastie, I’m not sure who is doing whom a favour here.
Anyway, I’m sat in the window, with my beer and my food, and I’m making a few notes in my book, and taking in the partial sea view. My hopes of settling into this comfortable spot for the evening are dashed however, because Saturday night is bingo night here at Cliff House Park, and the limited number of tables are quickly filling up (with the exception of mine) by players old and young (mainly old) anticipating a possible full house and a high old time. I’m asked if I want to play. Declining, I decide I’d better shift myself and give up my table for those queuing up to play. Relocated outside on the veranda with my Adnams under a gazebo, I listen to the bingo caller commence the game, played with playing cards instead of numbers, “Jack of Hearts, Ten of Spades, Seven of Heart…” etc, etc. The first winner calls “house!”. The next game commences. Soon the game inspires hysterical laughter from some participants, which is repeated, variously and periodically, by others. Don’t tell me bingo isn’t any fun; I’ve heard ‘em playing it, and it’s hilarious, apparently.
The game finally done, it’s time for an old time singalong. They’ve got one of those old 70s electic organ in the club house, and some old feller is squeezing out all the cockney favourites; “My Old Man”, “The Old Bull and Bush”, “I do like to be beside the seaside”, “The Lambeth Walk“, “Maybe It‘s Because I‘m A Londoner“, the list goes on and on and on, and it’s amazing how many of them I know all the words to, like a race memory. In the background, the Sizewell B reactor no doubt hums along. Funny, I started the day on a rowing boat taking a select few to the Southwold conservatives’ boathouse champagne breakfast, now I’m sitting here listening in on the working class bingo and caravan club cockney knees-up. Where am I in all this? I am a watching and I am a listening. And I ain’t nowhere.
No comments:
Post a Comment