Sandcastles For Seniors

Children go to the seaside to build sandcastles, paddle in the sea and eat candy floss. Older folks just like to look at stuff; sit in a deckchair and watch the waves coming in, stroll along the prom, walk out on the pier. And you're allowed to be a little bit childish too.

My brother and I went to Cromer in north Norfolk last week. Wandering about, looking at stuff and taking some photographs. 

The British seaside pier used to feature in almost every resort, though many have now fallen into disrepair or disappeared completely. Cromer's pier is kept alive for both frivolous and very serious reasons - the buildings at the end of the pier are a variety theatre and a lifeboat station.

Here's the entrance, lets have a wander.

It's a great place to photograph the gulls who regularly cruise over in case anyone's dropped a chip.

Or you can look out along the coast and see the town perched on the low cliffs.

The gulls seem to have claimed this breakwater as a pier of their very own!

Cromer is the favourite seaside place for many; it has a little bit of everything.

Minimalist photography. Not something that usually interests me, but there were strange distortions going on as I peered through this old lamp.

More to my taste was this dilapidated old façade looking out to sea. But I wanted to play where there was even more rust and ruin. And just along the coast.....

These magnificently rusty old workhorses pull the fishing boats up the beach. The constant exposure to saltwater soon destroys the paintwork.

Gorgeous colour and texture.

More colour from all the fishing equipment left lying around.

Some quirky fisherman has patched up the side-window of the cab with one of those boards where you poke your head through the hole to be photographed as Batman or Robin. The handy openings give the driver some visibility out to the side - and he can be a superhero!

Beach huts. Most of them locked up safely at this time of year. Have you ever wondered what's inside?

So now you know!

"Stern Reality" 2023

If you're wondering why I've given the above photo a title, it's because it reminds me, in a whimsical way, of a famous historic photograph....

"Stern Reality" 1892

by Frank Meadow Sutcliffe

The Whitby Photographer

While I'm in this childish mood, how could I resist the "slow pedestrians"? In fact I think I've become one.

Back at the pier there's an immature gull posing for a picture.

Cromer's huge church appears unexpectedly at the end of many narrow streets. We did pop inside but I'm not going to feature it on By Stargoose And Hanglands.

At the end of other streets: the North Sea. Les, as usual when visiting the coast, wanted a crab. And Cromer is famous for its crabs. 

I'd wanted to include the crab in the photo, but I didn't predict that Les would put his hands in the perfect position. Snap!

Take care.

A Camera At The Coast

As we travelled up to the north Norfolk coast I was considering how I might take photographs that were a little different from my normal approach. What I had in mind was a more "documentary" style, showing you what it was like to visit the RSPB's flagship bird reserve at Titchwell Marsh. It all started very well....

A good start

....I overcame my usual reluctance to take such pictures to show you inside the visitor centre shop where you can buy books about birds, gifts featuring birds, food for birds, equipment for watching birds.....you get the idea. They'll also tell you of any particular birds you should watch out for.

Then you proceed along the footpath past reedbeds, marshes and lagoons which are normally teeming with birdlife. Big problem: but not today. The lagoons were comparatively deserted and as a result so were the hides. I've no idea where the birds were this morning, but, as an old-timer birdwatcher once remarked to me, "They got wings - they can go where they like! Tha's your job to find 'em!"

Lets walk along the beach

There were some birds down at the sea's edge and one particularly enthusiastic soul was commando-crawling across the wet sand carrying a camera with a howitzer of a lens attached - but that man certainly wasn't me! I preferred to amuse myself with the patterns in the sand.

I can't help it; I love these wide open spaces.

That's the clubhouse of Royal West Norfolk Golf Club up ahead, a real seaside "links" course which gets cut off at high tide. 

Unusually, the tide seemed to have washed in something looking like coal-dust which made some strange patterns on the beach.

I'm always mesmerised by the alternating sandbars and inlets that stretch away towards the horizon along this bit of coastline. But we're heading up alongside a small stream that's making its way out to sea.

"Seal Creek"

I don't think Seal Creek is its proper name - it doesn't even have a name on my maps - but regular visitors to Titchwell will know where I mean. There are nearly always a few seals hauled up on the sand, just taking it easy. There's a sign to prevent you going too close, but that doesn't matter, the seals will come to see you.

What a privilege it always is to see these wonderful creatures.

Back to Titchwell

By the time we'd walked back along the beach there were definitely some birds at Titchwell and, judging by the cacophony they were creating, they were geese.

These small, dark geese are Brent Geese. They are not much bigger than the familiar Mallard and are only seen around these shores in winter.

While I was happily snapping away at these welcome visitors I glimpsed a small flock of dazzling white birds flying overhead. I quickly raised my camera and took a single picture.

It wasn't till I got home and looked at the pictures on the computer that I realised that we'd seen some Avocets, the only ones we'd seen all day.

Whatever had spooked the Avocets also put up the geese.

Where next?

I know, lets go to Hunstanton cliffs and see the Fulmars. Surely they will be there.

Fulmars hang around these cliffs nearly all year, nesting here during spring and summer. 

The low, late-afternoon sun was throwing beautiful golden light on the patterns in the sand.

It had been a great day, if rather different from what I'd expected. Then, safely back home and having sorted through these photographs during the evening, I glanced out of the kitchen window...

Take care.

A Day In Sunny Hunny

Every year, at about this time, the people of land-locked Cambridgeshire are seized by a sudden urge to visit the coast. Hunstanton is the nearest and most obvious place to go. From early forays with buckets and spades, to teenage adventures sleeping in beach huts, to later excursions taking elderly parents out for the day, right through to recent visits in search of shorebirds and seabirds - most of them came up for discussion during the course of a recent visit with my brother to "Sunny Hunny", as Hunstanton is less formally known.

St Edmund's Point

St Edmund's point is at the north end of Hunstanton's famous cliffs. There are miles of flat sands to explore, though our usual walk eastwards has been somewhat hampered and restricted by recent changes in the water channel, which drains out the last dregs of the tide.

Hunst'on Beach 

Despite there being a clear line of cliffs at Hunstanton, just a little further east the division of land and sea becomes very indistinct. Twice a day the sea comes in and covers everything, then it withdraws in a half-hearted sort of way leaving pools and channels all over the beach and sandbanks way out to sea.

Over The Dunes And On To The Beach or

"Look at the lully blue sky!"

"Look at the lully (lovely) blue sky!" was first excitedly uttered by my mum's great friend Agnes on an early bus-excursion to the seaside - it's been a catchphrase in the family ever since and must have been repeated every time we've been here.

Beach Colours

The beach huts here are more subtly painted than elsewhere (though there is one pink and purple one among them), but none more tastefully than the sand and sky blue one pictured here.

The Lighthouse

The lighthouse has long since lost its light and is now used as holiday accommodation. It dates from 1840, though a wooden lighthouse stood on the same spot before that. Lights may well have been displayed from the nearby St Edmund's Chapel in the more distant past. This most recent lighthouse was still known as "Chapel Light" in its early days.

The South Beach

The South Beach can be reached by descending a short flight of steps from the amusements, fish and chip shops and candy-floss stalls on the promenade. Later in summer it will be crowded with families with small children, but for now it's the site for school students involved in a surveying exercise.

Fulmar heading north

That "seagull" is not a "seagull" at all. It's a Fulmar, which is more closely related to albatrosses than gulls.

Fulmar heading south

For centuries they were confined to the islands of St Kilda, far out in the Atlantic, but spread into the rest of Scotland in the nineteenth century and into England by 1930. It took them till the 1960s to reach these cliffs.

Wave-Cut Bench

The cliff-line at Hunstanton recedes every winter as storm waves undercut the cliffs and rock topples down. The "wave-cut bench" is the geologist's term for the rock that's left once the seas have done their work and the cliffs have retreated further inland. The flat rocks that remain really do make comfortable benches for the weary wanderer.

Coloured Cliffs

The red colouration is entirely due to iron impurities in the rock.

It's Written In Stone

Where the red and white rocks meet you sometimes get some interesting patterns. I remember being fascinated by these rocks when I was a little boy - and I still find them interesting today.

The Wreck Of The Sheraton

The S T Sheraton was built as a steam-powered trawler, but served in both world wars as a patrol vessel. At the end of WWII it was moored offshore here to serve as a target for trainee bomber pilots. In 1947 she broke free from her moorings during a storm and ran aground beneath Hunstanton cliffs, where she remains to this day.

The Sea As Sculptor

A small part of the Sheraton forms this unintentional free-standing piece. I really should have spent more time photographing the colours and textures of the wreck's rusted carcass. But that will have to wait for another day in Sunny Hunny.

Take care.