At 2.45 am I am woken up by a child crying bitterly, in spite of the soft sing song pleadings of both parents. “I don’t want that one I want my one!” wails the ungrateful infant, not at all appreciating one of the basic principle of camping, that we leave behind home comforts for portable makeshifts that are not as good. Later I’m woken by the sound of quick-fire knocking, like a wooden mechanical drummer toy, or a toy machine gun, or, indeed, a woodpecker. Sleep in my one man tent shelter is always fitful anyway, so these sleep interruptions don’t annoy me especially. It must be getting light outside, but it is hard to tell, because a campsite lamp is on all night nearby, bathing us in a soft unnatural glow.
As I did at Southwold, I’ve decided to stay at Sizewell another day, and save the walk to the village of Butley until Monday morning. Today I will walk a few miles down the coast as far as the town of Aldeburgh, which the South Coast Path ahead misses to work its way around the expansive Alde estuary and avoid the inaccessible parts of Orford Ness.
At the fairly civilised hour of nine I decide to make a cup of tea on the burner. Unfortunately I have not rinsed out my mess tin thoroughly enough, and my tea ends up tasting strongly of the Jamaican “Mannish” Goat Soup, that I ate last night. Euugh! My nasty tea is spat out into the nettles nearby and I decide to go for a proper cooked breakfast at the Sizewell Beach Café Restaurant near the front, exploring the seafront on the way, taking pictures of boats and landing winches and the two large and disused looking platforms, like oil rigs, that stand just off the shore in front of the power stations, providing a rusty sanctuary for seagulls and other sea birds. At the café I also buy a Thorpeness to Orford footpath guide, which covers a lot of the walk ahead, and may prove useful.
The path going south towards Aldeburgh first goes past a large gloomy looking grey stone building that looks like some dreadful school. It appears to be disused, or at least, it appears that it should be disused. The path goes under a tunnel beneath some grand flight of steps that lead, pointlessly, down to the beach. Rusty and locked iron gates in the tunnel deny you access to the stairs and grounds; they have a sinister dungeon-like appearance . The numbers on a old broken iron weather vein outside indicate the place was built in 1909. Wikipedia tells me this is Sizewell Hall, a Christian Conference Centre, once a “progressive school”, which has “historic connections with a classic taxidermy collection”. Odd.
Further along, the cliff path shows serious signs of erosion; this part won’t be walkable for much longer. One part of a wooden fence has fallen over the side, another section rests on a lip of grass and topsoil with nothing of the sandy red cliff remaining under it.
Towards Thorpness, which sits halfway between Sizewell and Aldeburgh, I sit for a while on a bench on a cliff edge green as swallows dart about and a huge Stenna Line ferry creeps in towards Felixstowe in the distance. Beyond that still, I can see a distant wind farm. With my binoculars I can pick out 65 wind turbines, and my view of the horizon is only partial, with bushes and so on in the way. Curiously the sails of each and every turbine is still, though it’s breezy enough where I am. Later in my walk I am to learn this is Greater Gabbard Wind Farm, which doesn’t start operating until next year.
Thorpeness has a golf course, a country club, and a boating lake with cafes and upmarket gift and antique shops. Most of it was built as a private holiday village 100 years ago for the wealthy Ogilvy family who owned the land from here to Sizewell (including Sizewell Hall, I also learn). Many of the buildings are covered in black clapboard, giving them a faux rustic appearance - New England style. It’s all very nice, but a great contrivance, like Portmeirion, the Welsh resort Patrick McGoohan chose for The Prisoner. The cafés and shops are busy with holiday visitors. Shall I stop for a coffee? No, let’s not bother, the throngs of people put me off. The village is known for its “House In The Clouds”; a disguised water tower appearing above the trees by the boating lake; a small brown clapboard house, as if on stilts, supported by a black clapboard tower. It’s available for holiday rent. The sign outside claims, in verse, that it is owned by fairies. It’s all rather too delightful and preposterous for my liking.
Aldeburgh can be seen in the distance along the coast path. The path extends along a flat plain of grass, heather and wild flowers all clinging for life in a thin topsoil on a shingle platform. Nearer the town a I can see the sillhouette of a cockleshell shaped construction on the beach, circled by the various sillhouettes of children and adults. The Scallop is a sculpture by Maggie Hambling to celebrate Benjamin Britten, Aldeburgh’s illustrious former resident whose music, including the opera Peter Grimes, took much inspiration from the places and landscapes hereabout.
A warm sunny summer Sunday, the town is very busy with visitors and residents milling around the front, exploring the sheds selling fresh fish on the beach, visiting the upmarket restaurants, eating fish and chips from the popular Aldeburgh fish shop on the promenade. The front is notable for many quirky and irregular houses and buildings. Outside a tiny pastel pink terraced residence three middle aged ladies sit outside engaged in lively conversation - I imagine they must be poets or writers of some kind- they have that bohemian, literary air, so in keeping with the appearance and reputation of the town.
On the high street that runs parallel with the sea shore one block in, there are restaurants, bookshops, art galleries and so on. All very up-market, and I’m looking for sustenance at the cheaper end of things. I finally find the Co-op I’m hoping for, and stock up on pasties, scotch eggs and fruit, which I eat on the green on a bench by the Moat House, a 500 year old building which for 400 years has been home to the town council and which also houses the town Museum. Inside, a quiet, cool and pleasantly gloomy retreat from without, I look at a model of the village of the nearby village of Slaugden, most of which succumbed and was lost to the sea in 1935. A painting called The Town Worthies catches my eye; the stern and inscrutible faces of 19 prominent Victorian fishermen stare back at me, in their oilskins, sou’westers and silver neckbeards. A chronological sequence of photographs of the mayors and lady mayors of Aldeburgh from decades gone by also eye me magisterially further along the wall. I read about the railway that linked Aldeburgh with Saxemundham until Beeching closed it in 1966 (I plan to take the path that follows the old line on my way back to Sizewell), once upon a time, in the days before motor cars, railways connected most of the towns and villages along the Suffolk Coast. I also admire a couple of impressive treasure chests that once upon a time found themselves washed up on the beach nearby.
After a pint at the Mill Inn I walk inland a bit to the church where the path along the old railway track begins. It’s firm underfoot and straight - easy walking. I go through woods, ferns, fields; the sky has greyed over and somehow I’m zoned out, uninterested. Horses graze on the vegetated shingle towards the sea… what shall I do tonight back in Sizewell? There’s not a heck of a lot there - I can try the pub. I unwisely follow other walkers where the path forks to the right, and get drawn back towards Thorpeness again, along a path by the boating lake, then the House In The Clouds, then around the golf course. I come out onto a main road and past the Dolphin pub to find my way onto part of the Sandlings Walk, which goes back to Sizewell. The walkers who I’d made the mistake of following an hour before, a couple and a child, appear at the same time in the same sport, and I witness them have an ill tempered discussion about which way to go next. Forward from here the path is pleasanter, going through pretty heathland with vegetation similar to Dunwich Heath, and before too long Sizewell A emerges (in advance of B) above the trees, and I find my way back to the campsite.
In the evening I visit the Vulcan Arms, Sizewell’s only pub - it’s probably too small a village to merit having one really - The Vulcan sits directly outside the main gates to the Sizewell plants. The pub sign depicts Mr Spock from Star Trek, a military aircraft, and a god like character waving a hammer - The Vulcan Arms indeed! The pub has also turned a bit of land next to it into a camp site for mobile homes. They need to do something to up their turnover, so it seems, because inside it’s pretty deserted apart from a family I’ve seen on the camp site; one hefty drinker at the bar, his skinny, strange looking short haired wife, and their two flabby boys who squabble over the rules of pool in the games room. I wonder if they get much trade from the power plant workers? Perhaps once upon a time operatives would nip in and sink a couple at lunchtime - maybe a few still do - but I doubt it. There is little place in the modern working world for boozing during working hours, so my limited experience as a civil servant tells me, let alone around nuclear power stations. It’s the first pub I’ve been into that doesn’t serve Adnams; the Green King IPA I’m served is as lifeless as that found in London, as lifeless as this pub in fact. I exit.
As I did at Southwold, I’ve decided to stay at Sizewell another day, and save the walk to the village of Butley until Monday morning. Today I will walk a few miles down the coast as far as the town of Aldeburgh, which the South Coast Path ahead misses to work its way around the expansive Alde estuary and avoid the inaccessible parts of Orford Ness.
At the fairly civilised hour of nine I decide to make a cup of tea on the burner. Unfortunately I have not rinsed out my mess tin thoroughly enough, and my tea ends up tasting strongly of the Jamaican “Mannish” Goat Soup, that I ate last night. Euugh! My nasty tea is spat out into the nettles nearby and I decide to go for a proper cooked breakfast at the Sizewell Beach Café Restaurant near the front, exploring the seafront on the way, taking pictures of boats and landing winches and the two large and disused looking platforms, like oil rigs, that stand just off the shore in front of the power stations, providing a rusty sanctuary for seagulls and other sea birds. At the café I also buy a Thorpeness to Orford footpath guide, which covers a lot of the walk ahead, and may prove useful.
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| Sizewell beach, Cliff House in background |
Further along, the cliff path shows serious signs of erosion; this part won’t be walkable for much longer. One part of a wooden fence has fallen over the side, another section rests on a lip of grass and topsoil with nothing of the sandy red cliff remaining under it.
Towards Thorpness, which sits halfway between Sizewell and Aldeburgh, I sit for a while on a bench on a cliff edge green as swallows dart about and a huge Stenna Line ferry creeps in towards Felixstowe in the distance. Beyond that still, I can see a distant wind farm. With my binoculars I can pick out 65 wind turbines, and my view of the horizon is only partial, with bushes and so on in the way. Curiously the sails of each and every turbine is still, though it’s breezy enough where I am. Later in my walk I am to learn this is Greater Gabbard Wind Farm, which doesn’t start operating until next year.
Thorpeness has a golf course, a country club, and a boating lake with cafes and upmarket gift and antique shops. Most of it was built as a private holiday village 100 years ago for the wealthy Ogilvy family who owned the land from here to Sizewell (including Sizewell Hall, I also learn). Many of the buildings are covered in black clapboard, giving them a faux rustic appearance - New England style. It’s all very nice, but a great contrivance, like Portmeirion, the Welsh resort Patrick McGoohan chose for The Prisoner. The cafés and shops are busy with holiday visitors. Shall I stop for a coffee? No, let’s not bother, the throngs of people put me off. The village is known for its “House In The Clouds”; a disguised water tower appearing above the trees by the boating lake; a small brown clapboard house, as if on stilts, supported by a black clapboard tower. It’s available for holiday rent. The sign outside claims, in verse, that it is owned by fairies. It’s all rather too delightful and preposterous for my liking.
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| House In The Clouds, Thorpeness |
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| Near Aldeburgh |
A warm sunny summer Sunday, the town is very busy with visitors and residents milling around the front, exploring the sheds selling fresh fish on the beach, visiting the upmarket restaurants, eating fish and chips from the popular Aldeburgh fish shop on the promenade. The front is notable for many quirky and irregular houses and buildings. Outside a tiny pastel pink terraced residence three middle aged ladies sit outside engaged in lively conversation - I imagine they must be poets or writers of some kind- they have that bohemian, literary air, so in keeping with the appearance and reputation of the town.
On the high street that runs parallel with the sea shore one block in, there are restaurants, bookshops, art galleries and so on. All very up-market, and I’m looking for sustenance at the cheaper end of things. I finally find the Co-op I’m hoping for, and stock up on pasties, scotch eggs and fruit, which I eat on the green on a bench by the Moat House, a 500 year old building which for 400 years has been home to the town council and which also houses the town Museum. Inside, a quiet, cool and pleasantly gloomy retreat from without, I look at a model of the village of the nearby village of Slaugden, most of which succumbed and was lost to the sea in 1935. A painting called The Town Worthies catches my eye; the stern and inscrutible faces of 19 prominent Victorian fishermen stare back at me, in their oilskins, sou’westers and silver neckbeards. A chronological sequence of photographs of the mayors and lady mayors of Aldeburgh from decades gone by also eye me magisterially further along the wall. I read about the railway that linked Aldeburgh with Saxemundham until Beeching closed it in 1966 (I plan to take the path that follows the old line on my way back to Sizewell), once upon a time, in the days before motor cars, railways connected most of the towns and villages along the Suffolk Coast. I also admire a couple of impressive treasure chests that once upon a time found themselves washed up on the beach nearby.
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| Moat House, Aldeburgh |
In the evening I visit the Vulcan Arms, Sizewell’s only pub - it’s probably too small a village to merit having one really - The Vulcan sits directly outside the main gates to the Sizewell plants. The pub sign depicts Mr Spock from Star Trek, a military aircraft, and a god like character waving a hammer - The Vulcan Arms indeed! The pub has also turned a bit of land next to it into a camp site for mobile homes. They need to do something to up their turnover, so it seems, because inside it’s pretty deserted apart from a family I’ve seen on the camp site; one hefty drinker at the bar, his skinny, strange looking short haired wife, and their two flabby boys who squabble over the rules of pool in the games room. I wonder if they get much trade from the power plant workers? Perhaps once upon a time operatives would nip in and sink a couple at lunchtime - maybe a few still do - but I doubt it. There is little place in the modern working world for boozing during working hours, so my limited experience as a civil servant tells me, let alone around nuclear power stations. It’s the first pub I’ve been into that doesn’t serve Adnams; the Green King IPA I’m served is as lifeless as that found in London, as lifeless as this pub in fact. I exit.
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| Vulcan Arms, Sizewell |
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