Puff, Puff and Splash!

For the last few years, I've managed to take a day out on the East Anglian coast, reviving old memories and generally relaxing.  Some years ago - maybe three, maybe more - it was Yarmouth, where I visited some roads associated with the family my parents and I had stayed with on our holidays in my childhood.  Two years ago it was Yarmouth again, and I explored the relics of the Midland & Great Northern Railway (M&GNR) which originally had its terminus at the Beach Station, now long since converted into a coach station.  A few hundred yards up the line from there was the site of Newtown Halt, where - in all ignorance of its origins - I used to park up with my then girlfriend.  Last year, I had aimed for Lowestoft, but took a wrong turning, found myself in Dunwich and revived other memories.

I realised yesterday that, since next Saturday is already booked for a striking competition in the morning and an FA Trophy tie in the afternoon and the following week brings the ringers' autumn outing, this will probably be my last chance for a 'day at the seaside'.  As I quickly made plans last evening, I questioned whether this was actually going to be focused on a sniff of the briny or a hunt for signs of a lost railway, for I had decided to venture further north, again to a place with an M&GNR connection.  During the Edwardian years at the beginning of the last century, this railway company - itself under the joint management of the Midland and Great Northern companies - entered into an agreement with the Great Eastern Railway (GER) to create two small and quite separate lines that would link up these two networks.  This arrangement was known as the Norfolk & Suffolk Joint Railway (N&SJR).

One line ran down the coast from Yarmouth to Lowestoft.  I remember being parked in Corton, one of the villages through which it passed, and watching in the distance as the final train made its journey on that line when it closed in 1970.  The other line ran from the M&GNR station in North Walsham (two stations were there, side by side, the other being the one built by the GER that still serves the town) round the coast to Cromer, where it ran around the town, through a tunnel (the only main line tunnel in Norfolk) beneath the GER line, to join up with the M&GNR line from Sheringham and run into Cromer Beach Station.

This line closed along with all the rest of the former M&GNR's system in 1959, with the exception of that loop around Cromer.  When the GER arrived there in 1877, it sited its station on the high ground on the southern edge of the town; the Beach Station, however, was quite near the centre and much handier for visitors.  Once all the railways companies were merged into British Railways, and with the general level of passenger traffic declining after World War II, there was no need for there to be two stations in a town the size of Cromer.  A link was made where the two lines crossed so that trains from Norwich (the former GER line) could also use the Beach Station and the former GER station, after being renamed only in 1948 as Cromer High, was closed in the early 1950s.

Today's expedition was to the small seaside town of Mundesley and brought with it a variety of memories.  First, as I drove into Norwich along Newmarket Road, I passed the end of a little opening called Eagle Walk where, in my late teens, I had found a small motor-cycle shop, now long since gone.  That was in the days when the price of a secondhand bike would roughly equate to its engine size;  I think it was there that I found a 200cc Francis Barnett that I couldn't afford, and later settled for a 175cc BSA Bantam.  Next was a journey through the middle of the city ... well, not quite so 'through the middle' as I had anticipated for, as I got to the top of St Stephen's Street, I was confronted by a 'buses only' sign and had to divert either to east or west around the 'inner ring road'.  I chose west and passed the site of a garage on Grapes Hill where I had once bought a little yellow Citroen.

As you might imagine, some sixty years now since their closure, there is little to be seen of either the M&GNR or N&SJR lines today.  All I spotted was a short stretch of track-bed through the trees as I left North Walsham and what could have been the site of the line south of Mundesley as I turned a corner to begin my return journey this afternoon.  So my attention was, perforce, concentrated on the seaside element.  Despite the warm sunshine there was a strong onshore wind, which made the cliff-top walk a little uncomfortable.  There was one person swimming in the sea, however, and another - more thoroughly clad - surfing.

The sea is the sea, however, and after satisfying myself with sight of it, I turned my attention to people-watching on the attractive and well-kept greens and supplemented my lunch with my first ice cream since buying one in my brief visit to Ennis while in Ireland earlier this year.  With hunger now satisfied, I set off for more 'holiday-like' experiences.

At Potter Heigham, I found a convenient car park - free for three hours - for customers of Lathams, 'the Broadland Superstore'.  I couldn't resist making a few purchases, while fulfilling my customer duties, and then amused myself watching the difficulties of a novice boatman trying to park by the staithe and equally a couple of children trying to get the ducks to feed from their hands ... with mixed success!  I think it was at Potter that I once hired a boat for the day and took my children for a ride up the river and back ... but I couldn't be sure whether it was there or Wroxham.  I wonder whether they would remember that now.

Soon it was time to head for home and, being so close, I decided to make use of the ferry at Reedham.  It's the only place between Norwich and Yarmouth where the Yare can be crossed by vehicular traffic and the ferry was run as a family business for more than a century.  Whether the present proprietor still maintains that tradition, I couldn't say.  At two vehicles a time in either direction, he's kept constantly busy.

All in all, a wonderful mixture of new and old experiences, and all of them pleasant.  I wonder where the whim will take me next year!