This day, one of the first abandoned by many through fear, I got to breathe in the blue alone. The stillness was as if I was suspended in time – the mesmerising sky, barely lapping water, the sharp crisp spring air, salted for taste.
Because I know if I give fear a home and deny myself the healing power of nature, I will become a self-fulling statistic. I know if I live each day looking and breathing through a filltered fear, I will have socially distanced myself from what it is to be human. I am cautious, I play safe, but I am not fearful.
I take my sunrise walk with the sea as my companion and count my blessings. Because that’s what this is. A utopian antidote to the dystopian virtual voices. A vast wild untameable uncontrollable free natural world.
Everywhere feels eerie. Out of sync with normality, people and their relationship with places changes day by day. Today I saw only a lone jogger on the beach after I had been walking for twenty minutes. Yesterday there were a few more but many masked and gowned, sliding sideways down the narrow Victorian streets like grotesque shadows. But just the day before, couples, dog walkers, runners, the young with earphones half jokey half apologetic nods and smiles acknowledging the situation.
Ordinarily an isolated beach of smooth silken sand would have me turning cartwheels in my mind. But now I realise that emotion was a luxury dependent on there being others who might steal that space from me. Cromer a Victorian bustling seaside town has had it’s heart ripped out. The wind is howling tonight and I can hear the roar of the sea. Nothing in between.
We are angry. Places and spaces. Dont steal from us now. Coastal deprivation is real. Many of us cling to our livelihoods and work long hours inside our shops whilst you arrive and sigh and breathe the air . This landscape is all many of us have. We are loyal all year round through the storms, the gales, the isolation – not just the ice-cream days.
We get it of course . The air; the pull – the grounding returning tides. But now isn’t the time. We don’t mind slaving to your cravings in the hot summers because we know we need to survive in the deserted winters. We welcome you to share the beauty but you don’t own us just because of your economic power.
You might think we are the little people, if you think about us at all. The invisible infrastructure. The fires, real ale, pub grub after a bracing walk- the truth is behind your blissful escapism is for many, borderline poverty. We probably don’t even exist for you in the face of your desire to breathe and take the air. But you don’t arrive like a shadow of a trick of light. You explode in our faces. We weather the seasonal storms, the eroding landscape – rebuilding year after year. We will still be here- but you must wait. Just wait .Mediate and wait for the tide to turn.
These are the strolls I dreamed of not so very long ago – when life was a dull shade of suburbia and the best a local walk from my doorstep could offer, was a circular walk to Sainsbury’s via the park.
Now I open my door and skip into a wealth of choices for a walk. For months the beauty of the shoreline has kept me from looking behind me, away from the pastel blues and pinks or the surreal shimmer leading to the long low horizon hinting of worlds beyond. But now I realise there is room for more than one love in my life and have begun to chart the arrival of spring through the country lanes, hills and woods which lace the landscape.
I leave my worries behind the closed door, walk them out through the long narrow lanes, and allow my world to stabilize again through the hope budding in the hedgerows.
Before the spring equinox, the sun slips down away from my Cromer coastline, so I’ve been on the hunt for a hill high enough to capture the splendour again.
Beeston Bump and Incleborough hill are two hills formed from ancient glacier movement.
The secret green tracks from the village green lead gently up the hillside. Incleborough hill -an elegant climb unlike Beeston bump, where the effort supersedes any pleasure from the journey. Beeston, nearer the coast, claims a rawer theme with its tales of Black Shuck and the more recent remembered murmurs of the WW2 radio vantage point.
On Incleborough, the mud track turns to moss – a sunshine patchwork of emerald green, stitched with wild yellow daffodils. You weave you way up between the golden gorse, ambling, wasting time waiting for the sun to slip down, long shadows lacing through the bare twisting branches.
Entrepreneurs seek their pot of gold at Cromer’s rainbow end
Think of Cromer -and sunbeams and rainbows come to mind. The swiftly changing weather conditions is part of the joy of living by the coast and rainbows are in plentiful supply. When you spot one, or quite often two, shining above the waves, whatever your age -they still hold the power to stop you in your tracks, a breather in our busy days;. time to stop and simply stare.
In these uncertain times -for both the climate and the economy -rainbows offer a charm for prosperity and a reminder of that promise that life on earth was never to be jeopardised by a great flood of biblical proportion again. This is a faith the Cromer community seem to live by, with their chosen lives at mercy of both the elements and perhaps, the tourist industry.
A visit to many towns these days is often accompanied by a feeling of misery and despondency with the boarded- up shops, rough sleepers and the air of tired resignation of their lost glory. Not so Cromer. Cromer makes you feel alive. Step into town with the sea’s conversation as company, the colours sights and sounds of Cromer will charm you. Some towns are simply dead on a Sunday. Not so Cromer. The uniqueness of the retail experience on offer suits all pockets and prevents a pretentiousness creeping in; a constructed image of an idealised lifestyle too often seen elsewhere.
With charming book shops, an affordable eclectic music shop- Mighty Music (just opposite the bus station), antique shops, art galleries and a vast range of eateries, Cromer continues to delight and surprise.
Mighty Music Cromer
Something about the magic of this beautiful little Victorian seaside town draws artists musicians and writers, as well as supporting a community with trade and with the working fisherman and lifeboat men at its very heart
Waiting: Cromer crab fishing: Oil on canvas
Resourcefulness coupled with dreams for chasing that pot of gold, continues to bring new trade into the town -last year saw the opening of a fantastic the new Mighty Music shop, retro clothes shop , a Turkish barber to name but a few and very recently a micro bar and a falafel takeout. Come to Cromer -there’s so much more than crabs, sun sea n sky
It only takes a short train ride from Cromer then a hop skip and jump to the city ground, but I prefer to take a longer route and join the peaceful pilgrimage through the city streets, melting into the crowds as they swell from a trickle to a sea, of fans. We glide past the crooked medieval houses, past the church of St Julian of Norwich her -medieval message of love; her visionary understanding of Jesus as mother, her church from 700 years ago, tucked modestly and perhaps significantly, up a side road within spitting distance of the stadium. She served the people of Norwich when they felt spiritually lost. We pass, hearts full of hope, within arm’s reach of her revelations of divine love .
The pace quickens we are on a mission after all; the chatter intensifies. Crowds wait patiently in line; families (always welcome long before it became the norm); single men; partners; flocks of friends, a host of golden green bobble hats and scarfs. Inside -up-the steps -into the stadium- into the rush of pulsing anticipation. Adrenalin and testosterone- the tremoring vibrations of twenty seven thousand people. Gladiators and bull fighting – the power of the stadium vibe, springs to mind.
Team of Legends
The oldest song in football ‘On the Ball City’ sang like a powerful hymn; a straight-laced looking man on your right sudddenly possessed with rage as a ref’s decision spears the crowd. Emotions change as swiftly as the luck of the game – a troubled pleasure. Chants hum and echo to the players moves with their dance of skill, strength and focus. The raw roar of a goal; the twenty seven thousand sighs of a miss. A recent convert, I inwardly blush at my past snooty comments of its ‘only a game’. It’s much much more. Forget meditation and mindfulness – if you want to practice being in the present- go to a match.
Today is the best day to see the wreck. I’ve woken early to a blustery day. The wind is howling up the three flights of my narrow Edwardian terrace which sits a couple of streets back from the sea front. If I was to open my window I would hear the high tide roaring competitively with the wind. It’s early morning and I’m having the usual weekend debate of staying snug between the sheets or venturing out to catch the sunrise. From my window night slides into day with buffeting clouds of leaden grey.
It was the 9th January 1917 the SS Fernebo got into difficulties, almost the same date as this weekend. For the last three days, the sea has rolled back its waves to reveal the wrecked remains. It was an icy January night into day, coupled with a ferocious storm. I shiver as I let the cat out and although the sun has risen to fringe the sky with orange, the force of the wind blows me back into the kitchen, the cat dipping back under my legs into the calm warmth.
Raw Courage: interpretation of the rescue.
The chill spreads through my body as I think of men out at sea, those men who head into the storm not away from it. Men often make it easy for us to moan about them, but this courage they show- this raw courage which reveals itself like a low tide in times of challenge,- takes my breath away. With ropes they dragged a boat they could not launch due to the overpowering conditions and rowed out,with oars breaking, to rescue all but one who had died in the blast of a rogue mine or engine fire which had split the hold in two. These life boat men, rightly awarded medals for bravery were not even young, with most of the youngest and fittest facing a man-made fury: war. Some of the crew from the Fernebo had tried to launch their own dinghy but floundered against the force of the waves and were rescued by the bravery from ordinary citizens of the town who formed a human chain to pull them back to land.
It is later; the clouds have lifted to treat us to a bright crisp winter’s day and I stand in front of the wreck as the tide rolls back in to let the memory sink into the sand for another year
It’s fascinating to look at the pictures in Cromer Museum of the packed crowds on Cromer pier, lining the slopes and promenade, peering over into the waves. The only difference defining the separation of centuries, being the Victorian fashions. And it is somehow reassuring to think of them mesmerised by the same glorious sun rising and setting from this very pier. The certainty is comforting but the repeating patterns of human behaviour, a little uncanny.
Once or twice , whilst taking a promenade upon the pier, I have overheard a child speak of their fear of walking above the waves, suspended as it seems, between sea and sky. Their vulnerabilty wrongly scoffed at by the adults ‘in charge’. The children are right to be afraid. Perhaps foolishly, many adults (myself included) have dodged the powerful waves plummeting over the promenade, to stand on the pier in the centre of a storm to enjoy the thrill of the sublime, in awe, soaked to the skin on the shaking pier. But the child’s intuitive fear may recognise the fragility of the pier against these tidal surges. Time after time this pier has been rebuilt. It first existed as more of a jetty in 1392 and throughout the following centuries to this day, is has been battered, destroyed and rebuilt. A symbol perhaps of hopeful human endeavour.
Perhaps there are other reasons for the child’s instictive shivers. From these layers of history, ghosts are said to abound drifting over these wooden planks. Mediums, paranormal investigation teams and the TV crew of ‘Most Haunted’ have been hypnotised by the pull of Cromer Pier. Medieval men soullessly searching for their lost home of Shipden; ghostly lifeboat men -their committment to the rescue imprinted on this place forever and beneath the pier, along the sea’s edge,the legendary Black Shuck, orphaned from his drowned master, growling ferociously, preventing swimming children from returning to the shore and instead ensuring they rest in a watery grave.
The pier is illuminated at night – from a distance,a starry walkway across the waves. It is eerie indeed, when dashing towards the pavillion, often bowed right over against the force of the wind, through the ink splodge skies- the waves roaring all around you – as you head for showtime at the end of the pier, out at sea.The legendary Irish impressario Dick Corden is said to still tred the board with his ghostly step; his laughter haunting the corridors. Regular reports come from bar staff of glasses being propelled from the shelves by poltergiests. But perhaps most disturbing, is the presence of Elizabeth. She met a grisly death murdered on stage and became a trapped sorrowful soul doomed to haunt the stage for evermore.
One evening, after the show had finished, I left the theatre to be met with a dark silence – Cromer had been locked down – curtains drawn, lights out, bars closed and shuttered against the rampage of unwanted visitors who had descended, terrorised the town and departed. It was as if time had stood still, walking back through those suspended streets, and as if my footsteps too, were leaving their own ghostly trail.
Just when I thought Norfolk couldn’t be any more laid back , I discovered alpaca walking . I am blessed with a sensitive final fourth child. The flip-side being he is a highly strung eleven year old who is a ‘challenge’ to get out of the house never mind partake of the Swallows and Amazon’s idyll I had envisaged for his childhood in Norfolk. But then we met the alpacas.
The slower pace of life in Norfolk can take a bit of getting used to but it’s very good for the soul and for reducing stress levels. A stress head myself, even routine chores needed a gear change in my early days of Norfolk life. The enforced chat with the cashier at the local supermarket, where individual goods are rung in to a pause, chat, resume routine helped to immediately put me in the slow lane of Norfolk living. But just when you think you’ve reached the lowest level of horizontal, try a walk with alpacas. Well ‘walk’ is a misnomer -it’s mostly standing with a few steps thrown in. Alpacas won’t be hurried. But they are charming and very easy to keep apparently. Luckily we only possess a tiny garden or my son’s pleading may have seen me embrace the hippy good life once and for all . But for now I have two incentives for outside life- drone flying and alpaca walking and for now that’s good enough.
Cromer Sea & Sound 