Dymchurch to Norwich

I set off around nine, well stabilised with a full English breakfast.  There was light rain, and the sound of spasmodic automatic automatic gunfire from the rifle ranges at Hythe.  Nine o'clock on a Sunday morning... it must be enthusiastic territorials.


First stop, coffee at the Maidstone services.  Not that I particularly thirsted for a cup of Costa's best - not at their prices, anyway - but I needed somewhere dry to write a couple of postcards for relations who are not on-line.


Then a short hop up the M25 and under the Thames...

West Thurrock

Well, I certainly can't claim that this place is 'out of the way.'  There's a shopping centre here the size of a small town and hordes descend upon it daily.  For those who decry consumerism as the 'new religion,' it is a particular irony that the complex is designed around a central dome like some kind of cathedral or mosque.  


It's also a busy industrial area, serviced by endless convoys of articulated lorries.  If you've ever driven round the M25 wondering where all the trucks are coming from and going to, West Thurrock is probably the answer to one of the two questions.  This being Sunday, they were not so much in evidence, but I noticed that they had left a light diesel glaze over the roads.  The motorcyclist passes through West Thurrock with the greatest caution, especially on a wet day like this.


I came not to shop but to find the graveyard that features in the film Four Weddings and a Funeral.  With my eye for a civil engineering work, the bridge in the background got more of my attention than the dialogue in that scene.  I hear some people thought it was filmed in Scotland, somewhere near the Forth Road Bridge, but I suspected it was the Queen Elizabeth crossing over the Thames, and a quick visit to www.wheredidtheyfilmthat.co.uk indicated that I was right.  

St Clements by Proctor and Gamble

But there's a bit of a mystery, here.  I found St Clements, OK.  It's a cute little church, the usual pot pourri of repair, remodelling and extension over the centuries, now dwarfed by surrounding industrial buildings.  It used to be a bit run down and vandalised - for all it's Grade 1 listing - but Proctor and Gamble, the factory next door, took it under its corporate wing and turned it into a wildlife sanctuary.  Parking on the pavement for a couple of minutes while I had a quick look around (P&G have only left about two square feet for visitors' parking and have marked all the approach roads with double yellows), it soon became apparent that while the church may have been the one in the film, the graveyard wasn't; the bridge is just not visible from here.


A squint at a map revealed a cemetery not far away that might fit the bill, so I went there.  

Is this where confirmed bachelors come to be buried?  

That's the bridge through the railings.  It's the right sort of angle, but it's a bit far off compared to the scene in Four Weddings, isn't it?  Perhaps the film makers faked a graveyard closer to the bridge for a more pleasing cinematographical effect.  Whatever, I decided I'd spent enough creeping around graveyards and made tracks. 

California

I'm making a bit of a detour around the bulge of East Anglia here, taking in a couple of places I haven't been to in a while.  (And didn't get time to swing past on my Left-to-Right tour last year.)


First stop is the village of California, a few miles north of Great Yarmouth.


Now, remember my penchant for the unloved and unglamorous, right?  Well, this is my sort of place.
It is wall to wall holiday camps; acres of chalets and caravans clustered around 'club houses' plying all day breakfasts and fish suppers, slot machines and kiddies rides, karaoke and semi-pro 'entertainers.'


I came this way years ago while on holiday at the grandparents' bungalow in the neighbouring village of Scratby.  One thing I remember from back then seems to have vanished now; several of the camps let out side-by-side bicycles with which holiday makers could work off the breakfasts and suppers and terrify drivers on the narrow lanes.  I wonder if they've failed some Euro 'elf and safety measure.


The name of the place, so my grandmother told me years ago, comes from when a cache of sixteenth century gold coins were found on beach after a storm in 18-something or other.  It triggered a bit of a gold rush, and so the name.  One of the few cases of the New World giving a place name to the Old World.

Established holiday makers get to stay in brick-built chalets like these.

Raw recruits have to make do with these static caravans

They are required to spend their days in 'entertainment' facilities like this one.

On good days, they are allowed down to the beach to share some of the North Sea's howling winds with the Scroby Sands turbines.

And to prevent anybody escaping before their week is up, the authorities have left these second world war gun emplacements in place.

Scratby

A few miles on from California is the little village of Scratby, clinging on to the sandstone cliffs that stretch around this bit of the Norfolk coast.


Not so much holiday camps as bungalows here.  There used to be a local shop that sold buckets and spades and every third bungalow was once a B&B in the season.  But it seems a quieter, more settled community now.


However, for me, there only ever was one bungalow of note; 53 California Avenue.
That's Neena and GangGang’s house, scene of many a happy childhood holiday.  Some may have gone to places with slot machines and side-by-side bicycles, some may even have gone places that you needed an aeroplane to get to, but in Scratby I had unlimited access to cliffs and dunes and a beach sculpted into some different fantastical shape by the North Sea winds every day.  Better still, the place was dotted with WWII relics; pillboxes and tank traps on the beach, the skeleton of an ammo dump with the rusted remains of AA gun in the fields.


But best of all was time with granddad: my hero, my gentlemanly mentor: he taught me about not stuffing the pockets of my best trousers, how to polish shoes and tie ties, what hats to wear and when; he talked to me about music (he had a magnificent collection of 78s).  I went to evensong in the local church once where he was a bastion of the choir; we exchanged an indecorous wink as he processed down the aisle.  He even took me for my first pint - in full view - in the local pub.  He had a wonderful workshop with proper tools that he showed me how to use properly.  None of this is to disrespect my father who also had strengths, but of a different nature.  I miss them both. But in playing life's occasional googlies, in matters of dress and deportment, and especially in dealings with my grandchildren - extra-especially little Charlie - it is GangGang that I model myself on.


Coming back from Memory Lane to the present, I pulled up just in time to catch the present owner and ask him if I could take a photo.

Neena and GangGang's house, with current owner.

I wasn't the first person with an attachment to the house that he'd heard from.  On moving in, there was a letter from somebody who had lived there as a boy. As far as we could work out between us, he would have lived there when the house was newly built.


After a pleasant chat, I popped around the corner to the road closest to the cliff top, but was disappointed to find the shop had long gone, converted to residential use. The grandiloquently named roads, The Esplanade and The Promenade, are still pot-holed dirt tracks, though.

Martham

Moving on through neighbouring villages, I came to Martham just in time to catch the last hour or so of their weekend-long festival.  Apart from a fun fair and craft stalls on the village green, there was a scarecrow competition.

I saw the characters from the Wizard of Oz, ...

a flowerpot man from the garden centre, ...

Old Father Time himself, ...

and what was probably meant to be a swimmer being chased by an aligator.

I don't think this poor little fellow was in the competition.  He had just been saved from the pond and was waiting to be reclaimed.

There was also a scarecrow customer at the burger bar.  The aroma of unhealthy food assailed me as I took its picture and I felt compelled to go and buy one.  

Lisa, Burgermeister!

Lisa with the burgers told me that her father had designed the novel kiosk.  He had had a more serious encounter with the Crab than me and had passed away ten years ago, as a result of which Lisa was very interested in my venture and took one of my cards.  
If you're reading: Hi Lisa.  Thanks for the great burger.

Trunch

Suitably fortified I moved on to the not far distant North Norfolk village of Trunch.  The name may be familiar to folk music followers - at least those who followed it in the 1980s.  It is the home of The Kipper Family, Sid and his father, Henry.  


For those whose taste in music does not extend to the finger-in-ear, tankard-nursing, nasal droning that is traditional folk, The Kippers were a comedy double act formed by two figures in the local folk scene, Chris Sugden and Dick Nudds.  They did a brilliant job of parodying folk music, its performers and followers.     


They performed locally and around the broader folk circuit in the 80s, but I hear Sid is still going strong.  There's a website www.sidkipper.co.uk that appears to be penned by the boy himself; at least the style seems similar to his patter.


It so happens that I had a spell with my finger in my ear and, although I can't claim to be on even nodding terms with either Kipper, I can proudly report that I was once part of their floor show at a Sidmouth Folk Festival, 1984 or 5 or thereabouts.  We performed a spoof country dance in the stilted style of the English Folk Dance and Song Society, while Sid and Henry explained to the audience how the figures told the story of the squire's daughter eloping, a not uncommon theme in folk songs.


I had a quick look around.  

The village has a magnificent church, ...

... and a manor house.

It has a front...

... and a (less well-kept) back.

But I detected no signs of the village celebrating its famous sons.  Perhaps that has to wait until the pubs open and are in full swing, the spiritual home of the folk movement.

St Nich's at Swafield

Setting off on the B-road run into Norwich, I noticed a whopping great thatch-roofed church, stood all on its own on a slight rise in the country, with nothing but one farmhouse for company.  I stopped to take a closer look and found that it was the dedicated to St Nicholas and was the parish church of Swafield.  

St Nich; the only christian saint with balls - three golden ones.

The village that St Nich's belongs to has inched away from the church over the years.  You can just about see the first houses of the village about a mile away over the fields beyond the graveyard hedge here.

I really must stop haunting church yards on this trip...