Postcard from Norfolk - behind the scenes at Wells-Next-The-Sea
Obviously, I’ve always known that Wells-next-the-Sea is a
working port. The clue is all the
fishing boats in the harbour, occasionally one putt-puttering along the channel
and out to sea. Then again, most
of the time I see the boats I’m looking down on them as they lay beached,
thanks to a vertigo-inducing low tide taking them far, far below the harbour
wall.
The tide, it would appear, is anti-social, and usually puts
in an appearance in the early morning, meaning that fishermen have to get up
very early to get their floating boats out there, catch some fish, then back in
time for market, breakfast and bed.
No wonder they are all such grumpy bastards when they are interviewed on
telly, and it can’t all be the fault of the EU.
More than the boats, it is the crab and lobster pots stacked
up in the harbour that reveal the port of Wells to be working. Downwind, you can tell that a few hours
ago, these were immersed in the sea and probably home to a clacky, annoyed and
ultimately and unfortunately for the resident, delicious crustacean.
Today though, we walked past the harbour and instead of
taking a left at the chandlery and looping up past llamas to the pub, walked
on.
Wells has a sailing club! I mean, of course it does, why wouldn’t it? but they have
boats, all varnished and shiny and everything. And a club house, with a little marquee attached to it which
simultaneously announces to the world ‘barbeques are a frequent occurrence
here’ and ‘our members like to smoke’.
The racing dinghy’s of the club, uniform in colour, were an
incongruous bookend to the fish crates stacked along the harbour, looking for
all the world like somebody who was playing Tetris as art.
Yet somehow both were Wells, and epitomised the very picture
that everyone has of Wells, the beach huts. No two exactly alike, but all the same basic design, a shed
on stilts, the sort of thing an Englishman exiled to Indonesia or some other
flood-prone country would have in his back garden to ensure his mower and
trowel stayed dry, yet all different colours.
Past the club house, you come to the real working area of
Wells, far (well, twenty steps but metaphorically far) from the whelk stands
and rock shops, here are the sheds and warehouses of the fishermen.
I love industry.
Proper industry. The sort
of industry that is all about a proper workshop, home to about seven or eight
chaps, who are simply superb at what they do, and smell of swarfega. You can stick your robot assembly lines
right up your arse, if you want something done right, you get a craftsman with
a regional accent.
I got the same feeling here. This was a place of serious toil. There are some who would say that this sort of thing is
unglamorous, and maybe that’s why you have to peek behind the curtain, or at
least walk past the pub, to see it.
I wouldn’t agree.
I think there’s a sort of beauty to be found in places like this, where
people work hard at difficult jobs, especially when they are not around, when
the buildings themselves seem to be resting. The sheds may be weatherbeaten, but there’s not a stray rope
or a scrap of litter to be seen; untidiness and fishing, or industry, do not
mix.
Well’s beach huts line up in the sand like sentinels. Red, white, blue, sometimes red white
and blue, they are colourful and characterful. No less colourful and characterful are the boats bobbing at
anchor or, more accurately, by the time I get down the harbour, the boats
resting at anchor. But how good,
how reassuring, to know that behind the colour and the character is the
substance.
Labels: 2014, Fish, Fishing, Industry, June, June 2014, Norfolk, Wells-Next-The-Sea
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