Postcard from Norfolk – Cley-Next-The-Sea and Holt

Cley-Next-The-Sea is a small, charming village sitting on salt marshes on the coast. It's home to some locals, a pub, a pottery, a smoke house, an art gallery, a remarkably overpriced deli, a windmill and a bookshop with an owner who is a registered pervert. It's very popular with bird watchers, because the shingle beach and marshes are very popular with birds. Both flock to the village.

It's also the village I normally stay in when I'm in Norfolk, so it was odd to return as a visitor rather than a resident. Parking up at the village hall, it was good to see that the Scottish country dancing was still going. Scottish country dancing is to villages in England what salsa classes are to the cities, something that combines exercise and movement to music and has that exotic touch of foreign glamour and danger.

It was odd to park up at the village hall rather than just continue on to our usual cottage and there was an urge to see what interlopers were staying there (and possibly spend a relaxing few minutes chopping wood. There's nothing like chopping wood to relax you and relieve stress. If ever I get round to opening my man-spa, it will have a wood chopping room), and demand tea...and explain that one builds the fire just so, and pokes it there, there and the for maximum satisfaction.

If one has a lot of money to invest, one can visit the gallery. If one has an awful lot of money, one can visit the deli and discuss the purchase of a loaf of bread or, if your occupation is 'oligarch', open negotiations on a pork pie. But I always head to the pottery shop 'Made in Cley'. Is this the only example of a middle-class shop name pun? Such puns are normally encountered with hair salons, where a stylist running a business on the first floor of a parade of shops might call their store 'a cut above' and consider it Wildeian. I suppose in comparison to somebody called 'Carol' calling their place 'Carol's', it is. And it made me titter. Then again, so does 'a cut above'.

The place sells some pretty stuff, and some pretty ugly stuff. The thing about pottery is that for a lot of people, it mans 'traditional'. And 'traditional' means something looking like it has been dug up on an excavation of a monastery, and currently sitting on a table awaiting cleaning by a student with a toothbrush.

I bought a couple of goblets that did not look as though they had ever been used in a monastery, but might have spent some time in an inn in Middle Earth. They are from the light blue and white school of colouring, rather than ecclesiastical dark brown covered in privvy clay, with the three bands of blue reflecting the sky, sea and landscape that makes up any Norfolk horizon.

All that shopping works up a thirst. Recommended is 'The Feathers' in Holt. This traditional in sprawls across a number of levels and offers that most traditional, and least common, of English pub services - a warm welcome. Folk suck down pints or a coffee with equal pleasure. There is always somebody eating a bowl of hot chips and, most traditional of all, there is free wi-fi. I'm not sure if it's the pub's own wi-fi, because the pub is situated on the high street and backs onto a courtyard with lots of little businesses meaning that when you open your settings function to detect wi-fi options, you are presented with half a dozen options. Just go for the one with no password and away you go. 'Good beer, good food, good connectivity' as they say.

Finished the day with afternoon tea at Morston Hall. One has to book ahead and I was wondering just how much trouble it can be to arrange a pot of tea, an egg sandwich and a scone until afternoon tea was brought to our table and realised there was a little more to it than that. On a triple-decker cake stand the top plate contained the triple-decker sandwiches, the middle plate the tea cakes and scones (separate plate for jam, cream, butter, defribulator and so on) and the bottom plate the tarts and indigestion remedies.


The afternoon tea was something special. Morston Hall was lovely, and very posh - when you turn on the tap in the gent's loo a blue light shines out of the tap illuminating the water and your hand - to think that all these years I have been washing my hands without the benefit of a blue light playing on my fingers. The only issue is that the average age of the clientele can only be determined by carbon dating. There are other places to go with a younger, (i.e. middle aged) customer base, and one can't help but thinking that such places (like the Flying Kiwi chain) are more likely to do adventurous things with oysters...although not in a bad way.