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.

Postcard from Norfolk - Chips with a view

Pass the salt, and the gull repellant.

French’s fish and chips shop is the best fish and chipper in Norfolk and, if we’re talking pure fish and chipper, probably the best in the world (the fabulous ‘Café Piquante’ in Edinburgh is in a class all by itself, selling as it does the ‘Ladies Special’, chips with cheese and a glass of white wine!), certainly when it comes to taste.  And location, overlooking the Quay at Wells, diners can sit and watch the fishermen arrive and depart and the crabbers pace the edge of the Quay with line and bucket, considering no doubt if they would be better off just making a sandwich out of their bait.


The restaurant area is small, which matters not because the sea wall on the Quay forms al fresco seating for anyone who can’t find a seat in the shop and of course that special extra something that any meal has when consumed in the open air with an aggressive gull beadily eyeing your chips.

As well as the sea wall, seating abounds in North Norfolk.  It’s a beautiful spot with many views, meaning there is no shortage of benches bearing sweet little plaques explaining that such and such loved this view (sometimes of a lovely natural spot, on one occasion in the Buttlands in Wells, towards The Crown, bet he liked the view from the bar out to the bench even more but I guess it’s harder to have a small plaque erected in your memory in a pub, in all my years boozing I’ve only seen one).  Normally, if you notice such a memorial bench at all, you have a read, give a small sigh and move on.

Rather unusual to see not one but two benches bearing bouquets.  If a public bench is adorned at all, it is usually with a scarf or mitten that has been abandoned, but flowers are something new.  And touching.

Postcard from Norfolk - Hut! Hut!! Hut!!!

Wells-Next-The-Sea, home of the £60,000 beach hut.  That’s right, a beach hut which comes without running water, mains gas or electricity or any guarantee of good weather, will set you back almost as much as a flat.

There are some wonderful examples of the art and I think that most owners are now developing along the lines of ‘the bigger the better’ and ‘the better to ignore any neighbours’.  It also gives an excellent opportunity to give your hut an amusing name, something nautical themes, like ‘the rum shack’, ‘the sodomy shed’ or ‘lashings’.

There are posh huts, there are sheds on stilts and then there are, well, the forgotten huts, victims of the last onshore wind where the beach has eventually crept up the stilts and stairs.  Ideal, of course, for anyone with mobility issues as these are essentially bungalows but it’s the half-buried examples that really pique the imagination.

Presumably the owner is aware of the desirability of the hut, they need only look in the window of the estate agent to realise the value, so why are they half-submerged in the sand like the relic of a lost city?  And does treasure lie within?

Postcard from Norfolk - Tune in, drink up

I love local radio.  If you are visiting somewhere, the quickest way to get a handle on the local character is to pick up a local paper and tune into the local radio.  Despite the apparent homogenisation of the UK, it’s still true to say that every postcode has its own qualities.  That is to say, peculiarities.

In North Norfolk, the radio station of choice is North Norfolk radio (surprise!).  There are a number of reasons to tune into this excellent station, and these were all evident in the two hours that I heard this morning.  The first is that they actually do do an island waterways forecast, it’s like the Shipping Forecast for toddlers.  I love the idea that some weekend sailor facing a degree of chop on the Broads gets his forecast, just like some trawler captain with a hold full of mackerel facing the fury of the unforgiving storm and the cruel sea somewhere where the cod have retreated to because they think it’ll be too inhspitable for humans to fish.

The second reason is the limerick competition.  Now, can there be any better way of keeping yourself amused as a deejay for two hours than having people send you filthy verses?  I think not.  Apparently the way they do it is to go with a different letter of the alphabet every week to get a place name, so ‘There was a young man from Stiffkey’ for instance, and just wait for the amusing rhymes to pile in, because if there is anything the great British public are great at, it’s making up names for moist and thankfully normally hidden areas of the body so that they can just about rhyme with anything.  (As it happens, ‘There once was a wreck called the Vera’ was completed in clean and tidy manner, and the challenge here was because there are no places starting with vee in Norfolk, except ‘Very Fucking Expensive’, which is Burnham Market’s post code.

The third reason is the local announcements, both paid and unpaid.  Unpaid come in the form of announcements for local events, like the book and jigsaw sale at Fakenham parish church.  This sounds like a fantastic idea but let’s hope that they remembered to keep the two separate, unlike that time in Bromsgrove when there was uproar after some genius decided to combine books and jigsaws by removing the end pages from a number of whodunits and selling them in kit form.  On the minus side, quite a lot of people were both angry and frustrated, even more so than the Bromsgrove norm.  On the plus side, the auction for the concluding chapters for the mystery thrillers in question the following week raised several hundred pounds for MacMillan nurses.

The paid announcements or, as I believe they are called on commercial radio, adverts, are fantastic.  When I was but a youth, I heard a C60 tape of American radio that a relative had recorded when over in the US.  Just some songs and a DJ and adverts that appeared to have been scripted by the Monty Python team but were actually for real.  Fast forward thirty years and I have the same sense when listening to North Norfolk radio.  This is not, I hasten to add, because the tyre dealerships that advertise on North Norfolk Radio advertise family fun days with ‘free balloons, candy and clowns’.  Around here, the only time that tyres and clowns go together are when they put the former round the neck of the latter and set fire to it and, by extension, Coco.  But the advert that captured my attention was for logs.  Logs delivered free of charge.

That’s right, the good folk of North Norfolk get through so much wood during the winter that not only do they buy it, not only does the supplier offer free delivery but they actually have the money to advertise.  This is like Ocado, for wood!

Have just checked the Ocado web site.  They do not do wood.  Yet.

I’m not sure I like this.  When I’m in Norfolk I like splitting my own wood.  One so rarely gets to swing a huge axe unchallenged at home.  If you can’t chop your own, then the next best bet is to stop by a sign at the roadside that says either ‘logs for sale’ or ‘woods, next left’.  That’s the thing about the countryside, it’s quite acceptable to have a bootliner and an axe in the back of the car.  Still, if one is rushed, I can see the sense in getting logs delivered.  The next step must be the web site and the various packages, from ‘value’ (a tree and a spoon) to ‘luxury’ (organic scented wood chopped for you by the regional X Factor finalist of your choice, safety gear optional).

Away from the radio, it was a beautiful day.  Walking into the Within Hill Cider shop in Wells-next-the-Sea I cautioned Gentleman & Player’s cookery editor ‘don’t say we’re just buying cider to cook with’.  Two things then happened, G&P’s cooker editor piped up ‘we’re just cooking with it, what’s the best one for that?’ and the planet earth neglected to offer up a perfectly timed seismic event to bloody well swallow me up.

Actually, as you would imagine, the chap was very chaming about it, especially after I had back pedalled like a clown on a unicycle faced with a mob holding a tyre and a box of matches and explained that, yes, a small amount of cider would be going in a pan but a large amount would be going down my throat.

There is, perhaps, something of a cultural divide in the town and the city about cider.  In the country, there are, according to the documentary made by Oz Clarke and James May, three types of cider, fighting, singing and sleeping.  In the town, cider is known as ‘trampagne’ and also comes in three varieties, farting, shitting and shouting.

This had been a bad year for cider (I withheld my professional condolences as the owner of a vine) and for apples.  The crop yield was down and the chap explained that he was ready to go to Sandringham to ‘beg, borrow or steal’ from The Queen.

This was, bluntly, fantastic.

The very idea that one would have The Queen’s Apples in your cider press, presuming you could keep her son’s Duchy mitts off them for long enough, would allow you to slap the word ‘jubilee’ on the label and charge an extra 20%.  Moreover, the idea that this might be achieved by scumping made me want to purchase an under the counter bottle of ‘Sandringham scumped’ at once.  Forty quid you say?  Bargain!

Postcard from Norfolk - Cod wars? Or just chip rivalry?

It always struck me as odd that a single city could support two football clubs, and that the fans would choose one or the other when at heart it’s just eleven blokes and a ball and who the hell cares what colour top they are wearing. The exception is of course Glasgow where the decision is based on what religion you were indoctrinated into at an early age – Rangers or Celtic, which then determined what church you went to.

In Wells the rivalry is between the two quayfront fish and chips shops; French’s or Platten’s. Maybe rivalry is too strong a word, as at the end of the day choice may boil down to which has seating available if it’s raining. Platten’s is much larger inside than French’s, and has a more modern feel, some might like that but then again other prefer a more intimate setting and windows that can see steaming up as the weather outside makes sitting inside sucking on a chip seem like a terribly good idea. But this doesn’t explain the happy looking locals I kept encountering with their Platten’s fish and chip boxes, taking their take-away away, or taking it to an al fresco setting to enjoy.

The basic differences, as far as I can work it out, are this. French’s serve their fish and chips in a cardboard tray wrapped in paper. They also, and I declare an interest as a big fan and the holder of a French’s loyalty card, make the best fish and chips in the world, with traditional chunky battered fish. Platten’s serve fish and chips in a cardboard box, a bit like a smaller, taller, pizza box and their batter is smoother. Perfectly acceptable.

I like to think that there is some unwritten history here, that you’re ether a French’s man or a Platten’s man not because of your taste in battering techniques, but because of the side you took in the feud years ago where the daughter of one chip shop dynasty took up with the son of another and it all ended badly, possibly with a scuffle and a battered savaloy.

Or it may be some sort of religious thing, but I prefer to think that something happened in a traditional small town manner to establish fanatical loyalties. Mine was established the fist time I tried French’s fish and chips and assured with a card that means every tenth fish and chips is free.

Postcard from Norfolk - Art and commerce

'Morston Reflections' by Trevor Woods

In all my years visiting Norfolk I’ve never been in Big Blue Sky, the distinctive shop that sits on the edge of Wells-next-the-Sea on the road to Cromer. The exterior is distinctive because it’s painted duck-egg blue and because it obviously used to be a petrol station. Petrol stations converted for other use are something of a feature in Wells, which has no petrol station itself (the nearest one is in Burnham market) but two converted ones, one being Big Blue Sky, the other being a funeral directors. Egg shell blue looks better than sombre black as a colour scheme, in case you were wondering.

The shop itself is, as you would expect, full of lovely things and I didn’t manage to get out without buying a tee shirt listing all the wind conditions on the Beaufort Scale. Stylish and practical.

Next to Big Blue Sky is gallery Plus, and sticking my head through the door was something of a revelation. Prints and paintings of London and of Norfiolk filled the walls, all done in a distinctive style, all desirable and all well out of my price range but, wait a moment…postcards!

The chap behind the desk, Trevor Woods, turned out to be the artist who had painted the fabulous pictures and, obviously mistaking me for somebody with money, showed me his latest project, a large canvas of the London skyline. Even at this stage, pencilled but yet to be painted, it looked fabulous, with familiar landmarks emerging from the crowded cityscape. Good job he works fast, as he’s almost able to keep up with the pace of construction on the Shard.

Postcard from Norfolk - Llama drama or other matter?

Wells is home to a small herd of llama, or alpaca. For most of the day they sit in a contented huddle in a field behind the church, looking exotic but, at five o’clock, their owner leads them from their pasture to, presumably, their overnight accommodation. This requires him to lead five haughty and frankly surly looking creatures along the pavement next to the road.

To say that the llamas (or alpacas) look skittish is an understatement. He does do a very good job of holding on to the reins of all five but one feels that if there was a concerted effort and a five way bolt for freedom, it would be chaos, South American style. The creatures manage to look both haughty and mad as a bag of bats at the same time and one feels that the whole herding process could get, literally, out of hand any moment.

For instance, if there were a problem, it would be a llama drama. If the problem caused upset to the beasts’ owner, then it would be a llama farmer in a llama drama. If somebody, in the midst of a stampede, attempted to hurt the beasts and the owner retaliated, might this not be a llama harmer and llama farmer in a llama drama? And off course, if a prominent television historian and a famous film director were visiting the region and were somehow involved in some sort of altercation with the beasts and their owner, then it would be Simon Sharma and Brian De Palma in a llama drama with a farmer.

If they are not llamas, then any unruly behaviour would merely be an alpaca fracas.

Postcard from Norfolk - Fish and chip crisis

Norfolk in May is plump and green. Such succulence is quite a change from my normal visiting time of October, when it is less crowded, rates are off season and the hedgerows are thinner. Now, everything is in leaf, pumped up and big. This includes the tractors that roam the roads, pulling trailers of badly secured root vegetables ready to bounce onto your bonnet and put a dent in your metalwork and crimp in your day alike. The tractors are like rural caravans in their ability to create a tailback occasionally slowing the journey along the A road leading to passing the time with classic car games such as I spy. After three miles at twenty miles an hour following a tractor the most popular ‘I spy’ letter is cee.

The first night in Wells-next-the Sea is also the first night of the holiday and holiday rules apply, meaning that such high level decisions as ‘what shall we have for dinner’ are not the subject of prolonged consideration, debate and risk assessment but rather come supplied with an answer prepared in anticipation of such a moment: ‘fish and chips from French’s’.

In truth, fish and chips from French’s is a good meal decision at any time and actually a fairly good solution to any decision, up to and including ‘is it time to tell this person I love them, or is there something else I should be doing?’.

Rocking up at French’s, I was met with the sight of a chap standing by the door. Cooks standing by the door of their establishment is never a good sign, unless it is at the back door of the establishment and they are smoking a fag, in which case it is situation normal.

It was not situation normal. The family ahead of me turned away at the door, dad choking back rage, kids choking back tears, mum wanting to choke back Malibu. It’s never a happy sight when a family set on chips are denied same.

‘Sorry, we’re closed.’

I choked back emotion. The chap could see that what he had on his doorstep was his worst nightmare, a bloke who was not going to explode into violence but rather burst into wracking sobs. He tried to justify this gross violation of my human rights.

‘Sorry. We’re reopening again at eight, but we’ve got one hundred and fifty schoolkids to cater for and if we don’t shut, we won’t get the order done.’

This was, I conceded, fair enough. If you had been dragged around all day in the rain on an ‘educational’ trip that began and ended with a trip in a coach with a load of other kids smelling mostly of anorak bad hygiene, it would take a harder heart than mine to begrudge the kids a fish supper.

Of course, the wait made our anticipation even keener.

Eight o’clock on the dot I was walking through that front door, no queue, straight to the counter. French’s still do the best fish and chips in the world. One hundred and fifty school kids can’t be wrong.

Postcard from Norfolk – Cider and crabbing

It's common practice in Norfolk for any excess fruit to be left by your front gate on a little stall, with an old ice cream carton pressed into service as an honesty box. It was good to see this same practice extended to a grander scale when we visited Wells.

The Whin Hill cider shop at Wells is next to the town's big car park. I have parked many times but never been inside. This time, however, I was accompanied by some home brew enthusiasts. And when I say enthusiasts, I mean this chap will attempt to make alcohol out of anything. Cherries, pears, apples, all are rich sources of fermentation and eventual alcoholic delight. This is the chap who is turning my estate's grapes into 'shed red' this year, with the application of little more than ingenuity, yeast, a bucket and a shed. So naturally when he saw a real live car shop, he was off.

It was actually very pleasant, with that unpretentious air that surrounds any place that makes alcohol (does that explain whoso many places that sell it are pretentious, are they trying to make up for a perceived deficiency?), one shed held a cider press, the other a label printer. A third shed held a bloke, his dog, and some samples.

While my friends sampled the cider, swapped tales of booze making and stroked quite the fattest Labrador I seen in Norfolk (land of the vast beach and well walked dog), I took a look at the barrels of apples in the courtyard. This year has been, as all we wine makers know, a bumper harvest not just for grapes but for everything. The barrels were full of excess apples and a small sign invited you to help yourself. They were not for sale, just help yourself and if you want to make a small donation to one of the local charities, there are some collecting tins on the counter. I think that, apple for apple, I probably paid more for the half dozen I picked up that I've ever done in any supermarket. I think that, apple for apple, I've never tasted better.

We were in Wells to visit the chandlery, looking for toasty knit ware. To reach the chandlery, you walk along the quay, which was lines with crabbers. If there is any pastime that is the very definition of hope over expectation, it's crabbing. Standing there with a line dangling in the water and a bucket next to you, one wonders if, in the unlikely event of catching a crab, it would be a wise course of action to go on to convert the little fellow to a sandwich filling. Or possibly a hint of maritime diesel would provide zing. Or tang.


Or maybe I'm missing the point. I concluded long ago that fishing is less about landing carp and much more about sitting by tranquil water, listening to the rain pitter patter on your umbrella while drinking flask tea. Crabbing is, obviously, the seaside equivalent. It's just that I've always thought the bright orange crab line added a touch of excitement not normally associated with fishing.

The chandlery at Wells-Next-The-Sea sells all sorts of maritime essentials, from lengths of rope to belaying pins to attach your rope to. It also sells shiny brass instruments like barometers so that you know how much rope you are likely to need when hoisting things, ideal really because you can tap thee glass while you’re there and buy a few extra yards if needs be. It also sells cloths and, because these are maritime flavoured clothes, it is essentially just one bog dressing up box.

There are serious clothes with a serious price tag. Anoraks and outer layers that are designed to keep you dry in the sort of conditions that fish would think damp, made from the same sort of material they make deserts out of, so good are they at repelling water. Of course, not being stupid, the chandlery also sells authentic clothing in sizes other than ‘huge fisherman who has shoulders like a tractor from hauling on nets in storm force winds and the circumference of a family tent because of all the layers he’s wearing, due to his workplace being the North Sea, at night, in winter’. This also explains why the anoraks are available in colours other than ‘easily visible from the boat when worn by somebody flailing about in the sea and quite anxious to attract attention’, such as pink, for dainty ladies. Still, they do keep you snuggly on the beach.

In among the treasures of the tightly packed shop (including, in an adjoining room, a display of scale model traction engines) were sou’wester hats. (Hats rather than bonnets, Jane Austin heroines never set sail in search of mackerel).

Sou’wester hats are great, was there ever a piece of headgear so utterly associated with a single profession, other than an Imperial Stormtrooper’s helmet? Sadly, I was prevented from purchasing one by an attack of common sense, as my day-to-day life does not involve fishing from an open boat in a storm on anything like a regular occasion and, although undoubtedly the last word in practicality when it comes to waterproof hats, yellow can be a difficult colour to pull off. And it would make you look like a nutter.

I wasn’t even allowed to take it off the shelf, model it and take a quick photograph, as that sort of thing goes down ill with shopkeepers. Also, one does not wish to be accused of looking as if one makes a regular habit of sucking on a Fisherman’s Friend.

The thing to do, of course, was to buy the thing and to wear it constantly, until it no longer appears eccentric, or it starts a fashion. Possibly to lend that air of authenticity you could ask your friends to toss buckets of brine at you, and hurl herring.

The chandlery also has a notice board advertising boats and other nautical stuff for sale, like boats, all in various conditions but all offering the chance to be the master of your own craft and destiny. It also advertised Wells beach huts for sale, which is how I found out that they cost sixty grand a pop. Sixty thousand pounds. For a shed. On stilts. For sixty grand I'd expect not just cooking and sanitations facilities, I'd be looking for broadband and a butler.

Postcard from Norfolk - Wells-Next-The-Sea

Wells-Next-The-Sea is experiencing an emposhment. It's the reverse of the process where high street shops close, or turn into charity shops, or fried chicken places that claim to be from southern states other than Kentucky. If a shop closes down in Wells, it is quickly replaced by one selling something lovely. The place has a (appropriately) tiny wee shop that sells doll house furniture, it's been there for years. What kind of a model business model works that well? Actually the shop is charming, as well as all the period stuff that people imagine in a dolls house, it's got little model plasma wide screen tellies and so on. I love the idea of a modern dolls house.

It's got everything a small town needs. It's got a grocery that sells everything, it's got a butcher, it's got two delis and loads of pubs, it's even got a shop that sells fishing tackle, crab lines, and guns! Fantastic, frustrated at not having caught anything? Pick up a pistol and unload that bad boy into the harbour like some piscine gangland drive-by.

It's home to French's, which is the best fish and chip shop in the world, and the Crown, which has seen off some pretty stiff competition to become my go-to pub of choice when in the area. It's big which means it doesn't get crowded, it's posh which means there is champagne by the glass and it has a huge sofa where one can stretch out and relax, all that's missing is a remote and a telly.

And because it's Norfolk, everyone has dogs, meaning that all of the pubs and the shops have dog bowls outside them so that when the dog owners are inside, the dogs tethered up outside an have a drink. The only place that doesn't have a dog bowl outside it is the pet shop, which has two dog bowls. In addition, the pet shop had the usual pet stuff for sale lined up outside the shop, which is what the merchants do with their wares in Wells. Placing a bird feeder along with the stock had probably seemed like a natural thing to do, sending a firm 'bird feeders for sale, more inside' message. To the local bird population however, the message was 'free food!'. Maybe the pet shop owner was counting on the crowds in the high street deterring the timid wildlife, in which case she had miscalculated just how bold the local avian population can get if there's the chance of a free meal, and then a bathe in a handy dog bowl.

The high street was busy though, everybody doing a sort of slow wander up one side, then down the other, or zig zagging from shop to shop, drawn to the displays depending on whether their interest is in art, books, meat or really large wheels of cheese. The high street is a jolly place to wander in generally, stretching as it does from the quay up a hill to the buttlands, that small square of green where folk used to practice their archery and home to three excellent pubs. Obviously feathering beer barrels gave you a thirst. The high street was festooned with bunting when I visited, no special occasion that I could work out, just bunting for the hell of it. Bunting does make a street look jolly and it makes you wonder why you don't see more?

Wells is also home to a fabulous beach and a string of beach huts. These come in a variety of shapes, sizes and ages and many, many different colours but all conform to the 'shed on stilts' school of architecture. A new feature this year is a 'to be raised' sign adorning the sheds that are apparently not on stilts. Obviously there are stilts under there somewhere, but the beach has risen and the sand now creeps around the doorway. New huts are put up to replace those that have finally fallen victim to the elements and one wonders how long it is before these will have to be raised too, the alternative is to mount them on stilts at some nosebleed inducing altitude, not really an option as nobody wants to spend their day at the beach in a beach watchtower, knackered from the climb up the steps.

Still, keeps the local beach hut specialist restorer and builder busy.

Postcard from Norfolk - Wells-Next-The-Sea

The first day of October 2011 and the British weather is unseasonable to the point of unreasonable. Shorts and sandals are pulled out of the wardrobe for one last outing, barbeques are pressed into service once again as the air is filled with the smell of lighter fluid, charcoal and the smell of a million grills that were put away uncleaned after their last use, as temperatures reached those more closely associated with sunburn, binge-drinking and ill-thought-out holiday romances in some Mediterranean resort.

One of the great pleasures of being on holiday in Britain in October is that you get the place to yourself. That’s the deal, you will put up with occasional ‘dull’ days (on holiday lashing rain pushed ahead of gale force winds is never ‘foul weather’, it is simply ‘dull’) and in return not only do you get to see a different side of whatever resort you are visiting (that side usually being the ‘closed’ side of any seasonal attraction’s welcome sign) but you have your holiday experience heightened because you know that every other bugger is hard at work while you rise at the crack of ten, have a bit of a scratch and wonder what pub you are going to visit for a pint or two of lunch before fortifying yourself for the evening’s revels with an afternoon nap. There are no queues, no crowds, no parking problems and no issues getting served at the bar or the chippie.

So, in holiday mode (not thinking), I set off to Well-Next-The-Sea with the intention of topping up on some shopping and taking a walk on the beach.

The first sign that something was out of the ordinary was the crowd at the ‘station’. Wells beach is reached from the town by a charming little narrow gauge railway, which if it were any smaller would be mounted on chipboard in some lucky boy’s bedroom. This takes the tourists who cannot be faffed with the half hour walk from town to beach out to a little station situated in the caravan park by the beach. In October, it doesn’t run. Odd then that there are many, many people waiting, like the world’s most relaxed and ill-dressed commuters.

The little train was running. There were crowds walking along the path to the beach. Wells was mobbed.

In retrospect, I should have guessed that record high temperatures would have drawn everyone in Norfolk and, by the look of it, everyone in East Anglia, to the seaside. Still, there was a huge car park on the beach, surely that couldn’t be…ah. The car park was beyond full, there was a queue down the beach road to get into it. This is a car park that is usually so empty you can practically park on the beach.

Taking the attitude that I did not come on holiday to wait for a train, queue in traffic or endlessly circle a car park looking for a space (all things I come on holiday to stop doing), I turned around and we headed back to the cottage, where there was a beach three minutes walk from the front door that did not require queuing in traffic or a fixed light rail route to reach.

Thinking about the railway, the operator missed a trick this weekend. Looking at the crowds on the station and those who took the option to walk, it was clear that anyone who felt they could walk to the beach was already lithely striding along the headland, while anyone who waddled rather than strode had decided to take the train option. This means that all it took was one or two passengers to get into one of the wee carriages and there was already an overcrowding problem. The train people should have thrown a couple of extra carriages on to the end of the train (possibly requiring another engine) and, more importantly, stuck a dining car on there too, ideally selling chips. They’d have made a fortune.

We didn’t see the queue for the chippie but I strongly suspect it was like one of those you see in emerging democracies when all of the population turns out to vote for the first time.

Back at the cottage at Holme-Next-The-Sea, our holiday home really is next the sea. Three minutes takes you from the front door to the beach, and that’s the indirect route, respecting the back garden of the people next to the cottage. The route to the beach takes one between the 10th and 11th hole of Hunstanton Golf Club’s course. Signs implore you to check left and right for low flying golf balls, experience suggests that one should also check for golf clubs being hurled in anger by golfers swearing off the bloody game forever. This adds a certain charm and danger to the beach walk, and that to a certain extent is what sets Norfolk apart.