Lazy Waters

Shall we return to Norfolk in 2016?  Yes.

I've said this before but it bears repeating: I'm not really interested in trains.  This causes me to fall between the cracks in railway nerd circles.  I can just about keep my head above water but then everyone starts talking about 882s and their coupling methods and I fall silent and disappear into my pint.  A train is the method to get from one interesting station to another; a train is the thing that justifies a network map; a train is the means to an end.  

This extends to other features of transport.  I'm no aviation nerd, but I love airports.  I don't have a car, but I find motorway service stations interesting.  I couldn't tell you the difference between different makes of double decker but a good bus station is thrilling to me.  (I was once on holiday with some friends in Palma and they laughed at me because I took a picture of a bus stop.  

I thought it was a very nice bus stop, alright?).  I like infrastructure, bridges and stations and tunnels and halts.  The rest of it is noise. 

That doesn't mean that I won't be intrigued by new and different forms of transportation.  Strange and odd methods of moving about.  Which is why I was returning to Reedham, less than twenty four hours after I'd been flooded out of it.  

The extensive network of waterways that forms the Broads means, of course, a lot of impediments to land travel.  In most cases this is covered with a bridge, but at Reedham, it has to cross the Yare, the navigable route from the coast to the city of Norwich.  Crossing the river would either mean raising it extremely high to allow boats to pass underneath - a difficult proposition in a landscape as flat as Norfolk, where you don't even have the odd hill to help you out - or an expensive motorised bridge would have to be built.  A railway company could build the swing bridge at Reedham, but for the relatively small amount of road traffic, it was difficult to justify a lifting bridge.  

Hence the ferry.

Bungay.  "Lol".

There's been a ferry here for centuries, traditionally the only crossing point between Norwich and Yarmouth, but the current boat dates from 1984.  It's a chain ferry, which means there's a length of chain running under the boat from one side of the river to the other; the chain turns and pulls the ferry across, back and forth.  

I stood on the bank and waited politely for the ferry to run towards me, its chains clanking like a Victorian ghost.  There's a charge for crossing, of course, as this is a private business, owned by the same family as the nearby pub; for pedestrians it was a more than reasonable 50p.  

I'd thought that maybe the pilot would make me wait until a car came aboard too - it seemed like a lot of effort to carry just me across - but he waved me on and raised the gangplank and we slid across the water.  It was secure and simple, a gentle drift across the river, and then we were at the other side and the other gangplank was being lowered for me and for the car waiting on the other side.

The ferry is strangely separate from Reedham, off to one side, with the only sign of commerce and life being the pub and the caravan park next door.  It's the same on the other side, just a long straight road taking you away; the village hasn't grown to surround the ferry as you'd expect.  

I turned off the ferry road and onto a long, tree covered walk, a length of quiet backroad with the odd discreet gatepost.  There were Private notices and CCTV in operation signs and the odd sweep of a driveway.  As I approached the village of Norton Subcourse, the houses got smaller and closer to the road, with pretty wild flowers on the verges and the odd wooden shelter out front with an honesty box so you could buy freshly laid eggs.  So many egg stands; no wonder people in the country do so much baking - there's nothing else to do with all those eggs.   

The village itself was typically English, red brick homes and a pub and a church and a stream.  It was Saturday morning, still fairly early, so there wasn't anyone about.  People were enjoying their summer lie in.  There was the gentle waft of a breeze keeping the heat at bay and a slight scent of farmyard.  I took a back road, walking between a strange array of seemingly abandoned vehicles - a Jaguar, an old Ford, a Vauxhall estate covered in green mould.  The road kinked and bent until I was finally able to step off the tarmac and onto a footpath.

Walking on the road is fine in towns.  In the countryside, though, I want to break out of where everyone else is, to find a route that's less obvious.  Somewhere I can be isolated and quiet.  

For a while the path was well-trodden.  I guessed this had something to do with the Danger - Deep Water sign pressed against the fence.  Somewhere in the woods beyond there was a pond, somewhere to swim on a hot day, and I imagined it was very popular with the village youth.  After that though the path narrowed and became less well-kept.  Stinging nettles began to crawl over the walkway and batter at my exposed legs; I didn't have any choice but to push through, stomping them down where I could, feeling the tick and tuck of their bristles against my skin.

Suddenly it opened out.  I turned a corner and I was on the edge of a muddy field.  That deluge I'd endured the night before had filled the tractor marks and squashed down the soil.  I followed the path as best as I could, tumbling back and forth, and following the edge of the field.  There was a small ditch and on the other side was a field of horses.  They saw me approaching and trotted over expectantly, not seeming to notice the hedge in between us.  I waved a little guiltily at them as they slowly realised I wasn't coming to bring them a treat.

A hop over another ditch and I was in a field of cows.  Unlike the horses, they showed no interest in me whatsoever, continuing to mind their own business.  Some of them were standing and some of them were lying down and I tried to work out what this meant for the weather.  

I crossed a drain on a rough concrete bridge and ended up at the foot of the railway embankment along the Haddiscoe Cut on a wet service road.  I sank into the mud as I walked.

In the late eighteenth century, the only way to get goods from the sea to Norwich was along the River Yare.  However, the shallow Breydon Water meant that boats couldn't simply head straight inland, and so they had to be loaded onto smaller boats at Yarmouth.  The harbourmen at Yarmouth took advantage of their position and charge outrageous fees - as well as slipping some of the goods into their own back pockets - so the good burghers of Norwich proposed a new canal to allow ships to travel up from Lowestoft instead.  Hence, the Haddiscoe Cut; a long straight canal which would avoid the loops of the Waveney and would, in combination with dredging across the area and a new sea lock in Lowestoft, allow them to avoid Yarmouth altogether.

As with most canal construction in the 19th century, it was too late to make any money.  Traffic was lower than expected and they couldn't afford to repay their debts.  The Norwich and Lowestoft Navigation Company sold it to a railway company, who built a line on its southern banks and effectively removed its reason for existing in the first place.  

I walked under the road bridge for the A143, a high flyover that wouldn't look out of place in Birmingham, and then down a side road to Haddiscoe station.  There was a car park and a red phone box.  Inside it a notice advised users that BT proposed to get rid of it, but they'd sell it to the community for £1 if they wanted it.  (I looked on Google Maps and it's still there, so either the village clubbed together for that quid, or BT couldn't be bothered sending a crane out for it).

I had, somehow, managed to turn up at Haddiscoe at the exact point where I would have the longest possible wait until my train.  There was a single platform and a shelter with a bench still wet with rain so I sat on the floor and waited.

There was nothing else to do.  The village of Haddiscoe is on the other side of the cut, a mile's walk away over that high bridge; by the time I'd got there, it would be time to return, and there wasn't a guarantee there was anything worth seeing anyway.  There was a row of railway cottages behind the station but their green, overgrown front gardens implied a private world I didn't want to intrude on.

So I sat there, listening to some music on my phone, watching the clouds burn over me.  Feeling the sun.  Drifting.  Sliding away into relaxation.

By the time the train arrived, I'd gone.  My brain had slipped from "active" to "passive" mode.  I was lazy and tired.

I'd planned on spending the afternoon in Lowestoft, exploring the town before returning to Norwich.  So had a lot of people, apparently; it was a Saturday in June and the train was busy.  I realised I didn't want to do much.  I was still tired from the walks of the day before and Haddiscoe had killed what was left of my ambition.  

So I'm sorry, Lowestoft, but my entire sum total of impressions of you is based on everything within about a ten minute walk of the station.  Mind you, I spent loads of time in Great Yarmouth and I hated it, so you might have got off easy.  There were the docks of course, with an interesting looking raising bridge crossing the cut (again, I'm infrastructure obsessed).  There was a beach and a pier and an extent of gardens.  It seemed popular and lively and cheery.

But I couldn't be bothered.  I circled back over the bridge and into the town centre, which was like every other town centre in Britain, and I found a Marks and Spencer and filled my backpack with goodies from the Food Hall.  Then I headed back towards the station again.

Lowestoft (no longer Central) station does, of course, have one major claim to fame; it's the most Easterly station in Britain, managing to pip Great Yarmouth's by being that much closer to the coast.  There's a plaque commemorating this fact on the wall.  I idly wondered where the most northerly and southerly and westernmost stations were, and what it would take to cross them off the list, and then I realised that station collecting is an addiction.

I returned to the platform three quarters of an hour after I'd left it.  I'm sure I missed a lot; I'm sure I could've thrilled to this gem on the Suffolk coast.  Instead I went back to my Travelodge in Norwich and had a nice little nap.

A Farewell To Arms

Here's another part of the post-referendum trip through Norfolk.

I hunted down the guard on the train at Great Yarmouth.  "Can you stop at Berney Arms please?"

He squinted at me quizzically.  "Berney Arms?  Are you sure?"

I smiled and nodded.

You don't get many people visiting Berney Arms.  It's famous for it.

The train coasted out of the station, across the flat empty landscape of the Broads.  Wide open spaces of reeds and water.  Swaying grass, browned in the summer sun.  We began to slow on the approach to the station and I went to the door with the guard.  He looked me up and down.  "You going to hang around for the next train?  It's not for a couple of hours."  

"Nah, I'm doing some walking."

"Fair enough."  The train came to a gentle halt and he opened the door.  A wink.  "Last chance to change your mind!"

"I'm alright.  Cheers."  I jumped down to the platform and watched the train disappear to a pinprick.

And suddenly I was alone.

Berney Arms is famous for being irrelevant.  There's a diamond of railway lines between Great Yarmouth and Brundall.  On the northern branch, there's stations at Lingwood and Acle; on the southern branch there's Berney Arms, Reedham, Cantley and Buckenham.  Trains alternate whether they take the northern or southern routes every couple of hours.  But Reedham, Cantley and Buckenham are also on the Lowestoft line, so they get twice as many trains as Berney Arms.

On top of that, Berney Arms is nowhere.  There's no road to the station at all.  There's no village.  You can get there by boat, mooring at the pub that gives the station its name, or you can walk there, but why would you?

The visitor numbers reflect that.  In 2016/17, the year I visited, it hit a high point of passenger numbers at 1126.  Since then they've plummeted, with 42 people visiting in 2019/20, though that was because the line was closed for most of the year.  Since the pandemic I doubt it's had a single visitor; going there is the very definition of non-essential travel.

Sometimes these old platform signs hang on thanks to the efforts of heritage groups.  At Berney Arms it seems to have persisted because nobody remembered to take it down.  There is a faded totem sign as well, for completists:

Now I was isolated and alone, the only human being around.  I trotted towards the river across pitted fields with ruts and puddles.  Cows raised their heads to watch me, bored.  The only landmark was the windmill at Berney Arms which slowly grew and grew as I got closer.

A couple of stiles and I was at the foot of the windmill.  It has been lovingly restored by English Heritage and keeps watch over the confluence of the Yare and the Waveney.  Of course it was closed when I arrived, but it's rarely open; as you'd expect, visitors are hard to come by out here.

Far more important was the pub.  Ian came here in 2012, but he didn't go to the pub; Robert visited the same year, and he did.  But neither of them are professional alcoholics like me - Ian doesn't even drink, meaning he has to deal with the nightmare of daily existence while sober - so I looked forward to casting my expert eye over beer list.

Oh.

Berney Arms wasn't just closed, it was shuttered and abandoned.  The pub garden was overgrown; the concrete full of weeds.  Signs in the window told me that everything of value had been removed from the premises.  It was very much an ex-pub.

This was annoying, and not just because I get tetchy when I'm promised a pint and I don't get one.  I was also thirsty and I had only half a bottle of water in my bag.  And I had about three miles to walk, along empty, unpopulated, paths.  This might get difficult.

The path soon rose upwards away from the empty marina and onto a wide flat embankment built as flood defences.  For the rest of my walk I'd be a raised figure, a single stick floating above the flat Norfolk landscape.  The Broads are a flat, marshy landscape, the remnants of medieval peat workings lost to rising sea levels, and they mix water and land without differentiating.  A path can turn to wet mush; a field slides into a bog.  And always low, a long stretch of green beneath a blue sky.

There was nowhere to hide.  The hot June afternoon sun beat down on my face and body.  The sweat leaked from my skin.  I slipped on a cap to try and stop my vast Tefal Head from turning red.  I drank the remainder of my water bottle, slowly, eking it out, but soon it was gone.  Out here there was no phone signal so I didn't know how far along the path I was.  All I knew was I had to follow this long, snaking river, and eventually, finally, I'd reach Reedham.  

There was the occasional boat, chugging past, its diesel engine providing a thrum to match my walk.  One of them was covered in lads - a stag do perhaps, half a dozen blokes in their twenties with cans in their hand draped across the roof and deck.  Another was far more genteel, piloted by an elderly man in a floppy white hat with his wife sat in the back, looking like Joan Collins at Biarritz.  

I dropped down and sat on the embankment to root around in my bag.  I was absolutely parched.  Surely there was something I could drink?  At the bottom, I discovered a forgotten treat.  Back in Acle I'd bought a meal deal, mainly for the sandwich and the drink, and I'd picked up a pot of chopped fruit as an afterthought.  It was still there.  I chewed on the apple slices and orange segments, making them last, then tipped the juices that had gathered in the bottom of the tub straight into my mouth.  It was delicious.

For a while I sat there, my legs stretched out in front of me, the hairy sticks looking comically thin between my baggy shorts and my chunky walking boots.  Like a Beano character, knobbly knees poking out at right angles.  I let the gentle breeze drift across the landscape, freshened by its touch from the river, cooling me down.  I closed my eyes under the sun until I started to get comfortable.  Then I clambered to my feet and walked on.

Reedham appeared on the horizon, the ordinary, plain world of humans reappearing in my view.  I went down a side road, surprising a couple walking their dog - they clearly didn't expect anyone to arrive from that direction - and headed towards the bridge.  My phone had once again got the barest signal which meant I was able to find The Ship, down by the river.  I ordered a pint of beer and a pint of orange juice and went and sat in the garden outside.  The orange juice was gone before I sat down.

The Ship sits beneath the railway bridge.  It's a swing bridge and still opens three or four times a day - there's a lot of sailing boats on this stretch of the river that are too high to pass underneath.  Plenty of boats were moored up for an afternoon pint, but none that would need the bridge moving.  I watched a pair of dogs play while their owners sipped glasses of wine.  A train passed over the bridge, tooting its horn as it went, and a couple of people in the garden raised their hands in a greeting.  I mulled whether to get another drink and then a later train, but I could feel a stiffness setting into my joints, the familiar sign of my body feeling all that exercise now I'd stopped, so I hauled myself off the bench with a groan and began the walk to the station.

If I were a superstitious man this would be the point where I'd blame the evil spirits for turning on me.  Without warning, out of nowhere, the skies darkened from perfect blue to gunmetal, and a deluge fell on Reedham.  Sudden, heavy, colossal rain, hammering at me, drenching me in seconds.  The drains quickly filled, unused to monsoons, and I was walking in puddles that a few moments ago had been hot bare tarmac.  Worse, Reedham seems to be built on the only hill in the entire county of Norfolk, so I was walking up to the station while water cascaded down and over my feet.  It was bizarre and yet strangely exhilarating.  A turn from perfection to hell in a matter of minutes.

I made it to the station without drowning and hid under the footbridge, listening to the noise of the heavy drops on the metal above my head.  I was drenched but refreshed.  I hoped conditions would be better when I returned in the morning.