Normal for Norfolk

Some weeks ago I decided I would not write about the weather for the forseeable future... but, risking everything, I feel I should. Up here in the fastness of the North Norfolk coast, we haven't really had winter this year.

The days are getting longer, the birds are doing what birds do and much of the garden never really stopped. And this is the year where 'the country' has had its wettest winter for so many years. But not here.  We haven't been particularly wet - in fact I think we may have been below average in our little patch, and it hasn't been cold. Since the start of November I can only recall one very slight ground frost, and looking at the Burnham Thorpe weather station the lowest temperature recorded was a very moderate -1.8° in early January.

It has however been windy. But then it usually is. What is remarkable is the almost total absence of any wind from the north or east. This is not a bad thing, but in the context of the tidal surge in early December it means that what we now see along the coast is not just the product of the surge, but the subsequent absence of a major part of the normal restorative process.

It would be foolish to think that it will continue in this vein but re-assuringly things look remarkably alright just now. In my experience over the last 25 years in Norfolk, snow is more likely at Easter than Christmas but given what now must be warmer sea temperatures than usual coupled with a late Easter, we might just get away with it. However, if we do, it would not be a huge surprise if summer turned out to be a bit of a disappointment.

To rebuild... or not to rebuild

In no way am I a defender or apologist for the Environment Agency but their position is unenviable. With limited budgets and seemingly growing problems they can never satisfy an increasingly informed, interested and vocal society.  Away from their current hot potato in Somerset, where application of national dredging policies to a unique situation seems to be at the root of their position in the firing line, they face a real dilemma in Norfolk.

Where the December surge breached the banks at Salthouse and Brancaster there is real concern as to what happens next.  From 12 miles away, the Salthouse question seems to be largely about the merits of saltmarsh or freshwater marsh.  Questions over the ecological value of both arouse strong emotions and given the significance to the local economy of nature tourism it's not difficult see why. Purely personally, I can't help feeling that whilst we are all used to what was the case, i.e freshwater, it probably can't be maintained in the longer term.  I know the shingle has been historically pushed back and banked up again but my understanding that the current breaches are very close to historic positions of channels seems to suggest that as ever, round here the sea eventually has its way.

Slightly closer to home at Brancaster, I may have misunderstood, but the issue seems to be slightly different, with the emphasis being more on practical issues of access to the beach and the golf course. Strangely because the wider significance might be though smaller and thus the issue not so newsworthy (not, of course, that that would have any bearing on the outcome) this one might be considered easier to abandon by an Agency under pressure.  This would be a mistake; for those who need to use it, the repair and maintenance of this bank is vital, and not to do so would immediately lend it huge significance.

Plus ça change

If you asked around in the village at the moment, the general feeling seems to be that things are changing. The proposal for the car park has finally changed from an idea to a consultation to a planning application, and with this has come tensions and division.  There is little dispute as to the need for a car park; when we first opened in Burnham I was told by someone born and brought up here that there were two things which exercised the village - Christmas Lights and a car park - but as this had been going on for 50 years or so, there was little need to get too excited about it.

The site seems to have been known for most of those 50 years so that is not too controversial even though there are those who would prefer an alternative.  What has stirred emotions is the linking of the provision of the car park to new housing development.  There is no denying that the development aspect application seems to have grown somewhat during the process, and there those who strongly contest that it is too much, un-necessary and is driven by profit. Well, as they say, what's new?

Personally, I think the car park is needed - it is strange that we all love a place that from 9 to 5.30 everyday is dominated by cars - but don't see a need for new houses for those who are able to afford to buy them. As in London, the Cotswolds, and the West Country these will largely end up as investment properties or holiday homes. 

If and when - as now seems inevitable - they are built, the village will get used to them and the world will not end.  More significant in terms of the cohesion and viability of the community are other apparently minor issues which whilst not going un-remarked do not seem to stir the same emotions. The closure of the youth club is serious as it is one of the very few things on offer to school age people who live, rather than visit, here.  The loss - for that's what has happened - of the Parish magazine to a trade dominated give-away is in my view bad news and another step towards bland anonymity. The reported demise of the Burnham Society just takes this further and it is quite easy to see why a feeling of negative change is abroad.

However, despite what we feel, Burnham is not unique; these and similar issues are being faced across the country. Change happens.  However much we might wish for it all to stay just as we think it is, this is, of course, only the latest version of what is and will continue to be not a bad place to live and work.

'tis the season

Saturday sees the Winter Solstice - the shortest day of the year. And yet sunset is already, just, starting to creep back, getting a minute or too later each day even before the Solstice. Even if we can't or don't notice this, it does in some ways reflect the contradictions of these last few days before Christmas.

A majority are still rushing about, without time to do what they think they have to do.  And then there are the others who did it all ages ago and are now having to pretend to be part of it all.  Expectation is, however almost universal. And yet in little more than a week's time the world will move on and that feeling will have gone. It's all over very quickly, the way we do it now.

Nature - rather like Norfolk - does it differently. We may have passed the shortest day, but winter is only just starting. Storm and tempest seem to have been in ample supply in the last few weeks, but paradoxically there has not been a lot of rain and very little cold. Just like last year in fact, and the year before.  The rain and the snow and the cold will come, and maybe if it is like last year it may stay with us rather longer than we might wish.  But the fact it is naturally out of our control is good, so different to our modern Christmas with its artificial and manufactured rush.

After the flood

Just a week ago the Norfolk coast looked much as it had done for as long as many can remember. The storm surge on Thursday night has changed things. Not just in the physical and emotional damage wrought in the communities along the coast but also in the way we think and feel about the place.

Given the ease of recording and publishing images and thoughts there has inevitably been much posted about what happened and what it looks like. Two in particular caught my attention; firstly Paul Macro, a Norfolk photographer who posted a collection of images of the aftermath which sums up the wider impact of the event and another by friend - and also a photographer  - Janice Alamanou, who wrote about it from her home in Wells-next-the-Sea.

Closer to home, Burnham Overy was badly hit with homes and businesses being wrecked. The bank between Overy and Wells held but the stretch between Overy and Deepdale was breached in a number of places. Friends in Burnham Norton now find they have seaviews rather than the freshwater marsh they have been accustomed to, a pattern repeated along the coast particularly between Morston and Salthouse.

Much of what has been lost or damaged will in due course be dealt with. As Janice noted, they are a hardy bunch along the Norfolk coast and its amazing to see how much has already been achieved. Some locations seem strange and altered but will soon be as familiar as before. Last evening on the bank at Overy it was actually quite difficult to believe what happened. The path has a new soft topping - it's just like walking on a bed of pine needles - of material swept in off the marsh, the birds are there in numbers and the sky remains.

And then you come across strange things in the wrong place. Bits of boardwalk from Brancaster and beyond. One of the footbridges from the marsh, high and dry at the top of the bank. It's difficult to yet see how the creek and the marsh have changed but this will become clearer as time passes.

Peter Beck, long time resident of Overy and a man who probably knows as much about the place as any remarked some six months ago, that a big event - storm or flood - was well overdue and that all the groynes and banks in the world can be swept away on just one tide. Along this coast the sea has always won and that has not changed - nor likely to.

The coming of winter

These last few days of November are generally regarded as the end of autumn. In these times of weird weather - and despite the usual rash of alarmist predictions - the last few weeks have actually felt entirely autumnal without any real cold, unlike this time last year when winter seemed to be already threatening. Both morning and evenings have felt quietly contemplative, never more so than this week when my morning walks have led me down to the beach at Burnham, just below Gun Hill.  Calm, bare, beautiful - and not a soul to be seen.

There seem to be more geese about this year but maybe it's just that I've been out and about more. Certainly there have been seemingly endless skeins flying over each evening, heading east to the Holkham marshes. I am no expert and not very knowledgeable, but simply through repeated exposure I am starting to recognise some of what I see. As well as the geese and the waders in the creek, there are owls hunting across the marsh at dusk and, on my return, sounds of much owl activity in my neighbour's trees behind the gallery.

A change of air and wind direction can and will in due course change all this overnight but at the moment winter has definitely not yet arrived in our bit of Norfolk

Always look on the bright side?

A friend from my previous existence contacted me last week. For those who don't know, this was the world of architecture and in the case of this particular friend, landscape architecture. Having first met over 30 years ago in the slightly surreal world of London's Docklands in the period after the ships went and before the bankers arrived, John and I came to work together on a number of landscape led projects and competitions. Perhaps as a result of a shared sense of humour, or at least of the ridiculous, our friendship has endured through arty and design crises, changes of working arrangements and alignments and ultimately my leaving it all behind me.

John continues to practise his skills - his magic with landscape structure and his love and knowledge of plants ensuring that he is still in demand - and his modest and self-deprecating approach to the world. His latest project left me in awe - A Capital Aboretum - illustrating the variety of trees, native and introduced, that can be found in Greater London in the early twenty first century. Even if you don't think you're really interested in this kind of thing, do have a look. It is frankly amazing.

John in his turn has subsequently gently taken me to task about my life here in Norfolk - the country lifestyle, the landscapes, the civilised towns, the restaurants, the company of intellectuals and artists as chronicled in these notes. As previously noted I am only too aware of my good fortune. However what I write tends to draw on the good things. Day to day, the realities and occasional horrors of life are here just as everywhere else. Indeed it's not that long ago it seemed that almost everybody I spoke to both locally and further afield was suffering or dealing with problems of age and ill health and it would be all too easy to see only the dark side.

So why not? I think the answer lies not in the privileged beauty of the little bubble I inhabit but actually somewhere back in the reason why John contacted me - our long-standing friendship and as a consequence, seeing an email from someone I confess I can barely remember, but who worked with us both on a design competition over 20 years ago. Now with a family and living in California, Charlotte had contacted John to say that she is still grateful for that opportunity and how much she enjoyed it.

It seems to me that if such a fleeting contact is still remembered and regarded and is sufficiently significant in her life to prompt that email there is every reason not to focus on the darker aspects of life.