Flat: Ridin’ Out to Yarmouth

Flat is a series of pieces on some trips I made into the heart of East Anglia with a little bit of music listening thrown in for good measure along the way. This is the sixth part of what will comprise seven posts and it covers my trip up into Norfolk to visit the quite rightly famous seaside town of Great Yarmouth.

Thought of going to Great Yarmouth, dunno why, someplace to go for a walk by the sea, somewhere different and another reason to take a ride into the big wide open of East Anglia. A few such journeys have already been written about – High ‘N’ Dry in South Suffolk, Port of Felixstowe – Port of Britain, Cromer, Return to Felixstowe – all of which were done back in June, and then there was Norfolk Shrine in September, an account of a trip to the pilgrimage village of Walsingham in yes, you’ve guessed it, Norfolk.

This was going to be another bit of open roadin’ East Anglia style, early October time now, and with the weather still so good as to be almost preposterous. Confess I do have dim memories of having been to Great Yarmouth once or twice before but that was many moons ago, a lifetime in fact, back in the days when my family lived in Beccles, Suffolk for a couple of years in the mid 70’s where dad was manager of the port of Lowestoft before he became port manager in Barry, South Wales and shifted us all down there. All of which has been written about in the Badlands of Beccles chapter of Golden Telescope, an account of the first 26 years of my life. From what I do remember of Great Yarmouth it had a massive rollercoaster on a seafront which went on for miles, plenty of seagulls, loads of amusement arcades and that is about it, apart from the fact there also seemed to be a lot of water close by, not just the North Sea, but the wide expanse of the Norfolk Broads which lay just behind and around it.

Bit of a slow burner this one, this particular trip. Got on the road by 10 in the morning after a couple of mugs of fresh coffee and a bowl of cereal, which was the usual deal comprising Bite Size Shredded Wheat, Dorset Cereals Simply Nutty Museli with some toasted pumpkin and linseed sprinkle, over which I poured a generous splash of Plenish Organic Almond Milk. The weather was overcast and grey as I made my way out of Woodford and onto the M11, however I was not unduly worried because the forecast for the day was that the skies would clear, that it would become bright and sunny later on. The plan was relatively simple, to drive up the M11 until junction 9, which was the one after Stansted, where I would then join the A11 eastbound and stay on it until it merged with the A14, on which I would then remain until I got to Bury St Edmunds. Once I was off at Bury St Edmunds I would join the A143 taking me in a north east direction that cut diagonal into East Anglia, weaving between the Suffolk and Norfolk borders all the way to Great Yarmouth on the coast. So yeah, seemed like a plan to me, in fact it seemed like a pretty good one!

Made good progress up the M11 since it was pretty clear of traffic, and I was soon enjoying listening to Who Built the Moon? by Noel Gallagher’s High Flying Birds, an album which I had on repeat play through my Prius sound system. Never been a great fan of Oasis, the group with which Noel Gallagher became famous back in the 90’s, but a few weeks ago whilst out on one of my local walks I had picked up a CD copy of their Dig Out Your Soul album from a charity shop in South Woodford for just 99p. Got to say I think it’s brilliant in parts, possibly overlooked by some people due to those years and years of bad behaviour courtesy of the band, or to be more specific, the Gallagher brothers, so much so that by the time it came out in 2009, many people had more than had enough of all things Oasis. However there is no doubt that Dig Out Your Soul has some great stuff on it, particularly tracks like The Shock of the Lightning, To Be Where There’s Life and The Nature of Reality which are some of the best things they ever came up with.

A few months before that encounter with Dig Out Your Soul I had bought Noel Gallagher’s first solo album which had been on special offer in the HMV Store in Westfield, two CDs for ten quid or something like that, but I had never really got around to seriously listening to it. Since acquiring Dig Out Your Soul however, I have been playing the first solo album of Noel’s as well – Noel Gallagher’s High Flying Birds is the name of it – which is a bit of a mouthful but a great album, and it was on the basis of that and Dig Out Your Soul that I ordered a copy of Who Built the Moon? from Amazon, something which duly popped through my letter box just the other day. It turned out that I was pretty much going to keep Who Built the Moon? on the Prius sound system the whole damn trip, got a bit carried away you might say, playing it over and over, guess it made its way under my skin and I just couldn’t help myself, plus in places it was really good, quite a few places as a matter of fact. So if you ever fancy getting into some of the music of a songwriter who used to be a first class yob, I would not hesitate to recommend Who Built the Moon? It’s as good a place as any within the Noel Gallagher canon from which to start.

Nearly had a bit of a problem getting off the M11 at junction 9 when I had to squeeze in between two big lorries just before the exit, the motorway at that point was only two lanes and for a couple of seconds I really thought it was going to be touch and go as to whether the lorry behind might bump me. Fortunately it was all OK, I got off unscathed, didn’t even have to suffer the embarrassment of getting horned which surprised me because it had been close to being a decidedly sticky situation and what’s more, it would have all been my fault. It reminded once again that life is fragile, a single false move could see it all over in the blink of an eye, and it reminded me of some words I had written in my notebook earlier in the year during a road trip in South India, words which went –

One day you’re luck runs out and then it is as if it was never there.

Eastbound on the A11 was fast, pretty much the same as usual due to there being no speed cameras and for miles and miles not too much in the way of traffic. It was at this point the sun came out for the first time that day, soon bled away any lingering cloud cover to reveal a completely blue sky in which it shone bright and blinding, meaning I had to get my pair of sunglasses out. Problem with this manoeuvre was that my Ray Bans were in my little red rucksack on the back seat of the Prius, not so easily accessible, not unless I fancied running the risk of smashing the car, causing a potentially horrific accident and thoroughly spoiling what was turning out to be a fine morning. Therefore I had to abandon any attempt to get them, make do instead with a cheap pair of Adidas shades which were in the glove compartment, a pair I had picked up a couple of years ago for 20 quid from a TK Maxx store down in Brighton. Funnily enough when I stuck them on they were alright, better than I remembered as I hadn’t worn them for a while, not since getting the Ray Bans. They turned everything a dark shaded blue whilst the sun became an almighty ball of blazing white, all of which seemed to fit the scene perfectly, cosmically even.

Guess it took me around 65 – 70 minutes to get from Woodford to the turn off for the A143 on the A14, which wasn’t bad going at all, in fact going that way was always pretty clear, never any hassle, little more than point and shoot. Driving the A143 was the part of the road trip I was looking forward to, by and large it was new to me, sure I might have been on bits of it before from time to time, but never its full length, which was a distance of 60 miles from Bury St Edmunds to Great Yarmouth. It was also time for me to say goodbye to Noel Gallagher’s High Flying Birds for a little while and turn the music off, to wind down the windows of the car and let some air in, air which felt freakin’ fresh an’ crispy. A few miles along the A143 the gently rolling fields of Suffolk revealed themselves, with their misty edges running into a blur under the blue skies of an early October day. Suddenly the conditions for driving were perfect or pretty damn close and clearly the road when it flowed was going to be a fast one. I was back in the frame, back on the button, back on the open highway, sticking my head into the world whilst seeking out who knows what? Soon I was cruising along in a funnel of fast moving traffic, all of it going 50 – 60 miles an hour and headin’ in the direction of the east coast.

funnelled into a tunnel of car whir,
race along as a crossed apostrophe if you must,
but don’t forget in death we must all have to stand naked!

Now I guess that last line reminds me of a famous song, but oh ma if only I could remember the bleeding name of it. Further up the A143 from Diss there were the Norfolk and Suffolk border towns of Bungay and Beccles, both of which lay on the River Waverley, then finally after these lay the watery flatlands of The Broads leading into Great Yarmouth on the coast and looking out upon the North Sea.

When I started off earlier that morning from Woodford, Google had indicated the journey time would be something like 2 hours 15 mins and that was pretty much what it would have turned out to be if it hadn’t been that just before entering Great Yarmouth a diversion had been set in place due to the fact they were digging up the road. Got to admit I initially missed a trick on this one, completely ignored the Road Ahead Closed signs, stayed on it until I could go no further, and that was maybe because the road was closed. The signs hadn’t been put there just for fun! It meant I had to double back through a housing estate in order to pick up the thread again, the thread of a diversion which took me onto the A12 past Gorleston-On-Sea just south of Great Yarmouth. By the time I rolled up into town it was coming up to 12:20, so I guess I lost 10 – 15 minutes on the Google estimation time, which was hardly the end of the world, although possibly Great Yarmouth might have been, the end of the world that is. There were a few things on my mind as I made my way into its centre, namely finding a garage to fill up with petrol due to the fact I was down to the last few miles in the tank, finding somewhere to park the Prius, preferably close to the seafront, and last but by no means least, finding somewhere to have a piss because by this stage, after two hours ridin’ behind the wheel, I was absolutely bursting.

With regard to the first item on the list, that petrol filling thingy, I was able to pull up at a Harvest station which was next to a large Sainsbury’s close to the centre of town and from there buy some fuel, some juice, some gas, whatever it is you want to call it. Now I can’t say that I had noticed too many Harvest petrol stations before venturing into the East Anglia, but over in that part of the world there seemed to be quite a few of them, just as many as the big boys like Shell, BP, ESSO and Texaco. I stood at the pump in the Harvest forecourt and filled up the Prius to the tune of 40 quid, which would be more than enough to keep me going for the rest of the day, and pretty far beyond that as well, due to the fact I wasn’t doing so much driving these days, at least not so much as I used to back in former times of free abandon. In my gassed up car it wasn’t long before I rolled up along the seafront after the following all the signs, lots of signs, suggesting the town authorities were used to dealing with people who might lose their way, even when the only real direction was the sea.

Getting my pack together, a bag to sling over my shoulder for the walk, I went to the ticket machine and pumped in £4.50 which would give me 4 hours parking. When I stuck my parking ticket on the dashboard beneath the windscreen of the car I noted the time was 12:31, which meant it had taken me more or less exactly 2 and a half hours to get to Great Yarmouth from Woodford. Guessed that 4 hours would probably be more than enough for me to get a taste of what was on offer – seafront, town centre, possibly a museum thrown into the deal and all the rest of it – along with rivers, broads, port and ships, where a sense of the big wide world peeking out from under the covers of a far horizon was always a distinct possibility.

Once the parking was sorted the final thing I needed to do was have that piss which I felt was well earned after having safely made it out to the coast with only one or two minor hiccups along the way, Road Ahead Closed saga being the main one. Fortunately there were plenty of public toilets on the seafront so it didn’t take me long to find some relief, probably it was the case Great Yarmouth sometimes had to cater for tons of old folk in a similarly inconvenient position. Got to admit that after 2½ hours in the Prius, with the last 30 minutes or so feeling distinctly uncomfortable due to a very full bladder whilst at the same time beginning to worry about not having enough gas in the tank, it did take me a little while to find my feet. Time was needed to fully adjust to being on the seafront of Great Yarmouth in what was now the bright light of the day, a glorious Friday in early October. I walked on the side of the road where the Britannia Pier stood with the sprawling sands of the beach surrounding it, sands leading to the North Sea where in the hazy distance a massive wind farm with a thousand slowly spinning blades stood against a backdrop of blue on the far horizon. On the other side of the road were a number of hotels, guest houses, restaurants, takeaways, along with a whole bunch of amusement arcades illuminating names such as –

Showboat – Majestic – Merlin – Caesar’s Palace – Flamingo – Gold Rush – Magic City – The Mint – Silver Slipper – Treasure – LeisureLand

– the bright lights of glitter and promise where infinite riches lay just round the corner if only you would step inside one, or better still, all of them, in order to try your luck. But I really was struck by their names and very impressed by their beaming appearance. To me they showed great imagination, despite the obvious fact that they were there to take your money, not to fly you to Las Vegas on any kind of free ride or anything like that. No doubt it was also the case they were all safely under the control of a long established Norfolk Mafia which was well beyond the reach of the law. Local boys and girls who knew a good thing when they saw one, made sure they ran a watertight racket by the waters of the North Sea at the mouth of the River Yare. A racket which would no doubt include dealing brutally and decisively with any outsiders who might fancy their chances of muscling their way into the seaside scene.

After this first blast of the seafront, where I stood for a while wondering what exactly my plan was, I woke up to the fact that I was feeling more than a little peckish and that if I wanted to do some serious walking I would need to eat something first because it was now quite some time since I’d had my breakfast. I spent a few minutes casting my eye around to see what was on offer before finally hitting on the Anchor Gardens Cafe which lay close to the sands. Once inside I walked up to the counter and ordered a cheese and tomato toastie, a sultana scone and a cup of tea, all for £5.20, which didn’t seem too bad at all. I told the friendly Irish woman behind the counter that I would sit at one of the tables outside because it was nice there, pretty hot as a matter of fact, now that it was coming up to the middle part of the day. Whilst waiting outside, beneath a really rather glorious east of England sun, I checked my mobile for messages and noted a few things down, mainly the names of all those amusement arcades standing there facing me across the road, all of them looking so inviting, so full of promise and with all the answers to any dreams I might have ever cared to imagine.

The food was pretty good when it was brought out to me, a tasty toastie full of strong cheese, a perfectly fine cup of tea and then a scone with jam and butter to top it all off. All of it consumed in the fresh breeze close to the waters of the North Sea with hardly a soul around on a bright sunny day in October. With some food and drink inside me I felt much better, so now began to get my bearings and after a little bit of working things out headed for the path closest to the sands and the sea, the quiet path, the path furthest from the road, not that the road was very busy. Once on the path I only had to keep on walking due south because it stretched down the coast in the direction of Gorleston-On-Sea, the place I’d driven past not so long ago on my way in. The main thing which struck me was how deserted it was, there was a young couple in the distance ahead of me, but no one else, like a blessing from outer space, making it a good time for a solitary session of seaside walking.

On busy days in the middle of the summer when the tourists were in town, the seafront must have got packed, people in search of fun by the sand and sea, where everything was done on a scale large enough to accommodate what at times must have been pretty large and boisterous crowds, all rolled up in a saucy cannonball of tattoos, chips, candy floss and ice cream. But today it was quiet, despite the fact it was a Friday with beautiful weather, guessed this might have indicated just how much Great Yarmouth was a place for working people, that the reason why it was quiet was precisely because it was a Friday and they were all busy earning their crust, toiling in places far away from the seaside. The emptiness of it all, with so many of the shops, stalls and parlours closed for business, gave me a faint taste of how bleak it might have been on a bitingly cold day in the middle of November, when strong winds blew in off the North Sea and no one had any money, where even if they had, there would have been nothing to spend it on. From the shore path I kept gazing upon the vast expanse of sands which stretched out to the waters, one or two people upon those sands walking dogs, but no more than that, making them matchstick figures in the distance.

yellow onto blue in the great late, late summer immensity

As I walked along I looked out upon the scene spread before me and felt I was just a human being on Planet Earth making his way through this thing called life; all of it beneath a seaside sky filled with jet stream crosses streaked against a deep blue backdrop of considerable intensity. Walked all the way down that quiet path, seemingly just me with the sands and the sea. It felt fantastic, so good to be walking to a roller coaster called Pleasure Beach which was all shut up. Probably it would be open on the weekends and for special occasions, judging at least by the posters with ghosts advertising a Halloween Special: Two Rides for the Price of One! plastered onto its hoardings.

The buildings of Gorleston-On-Sea lay further down south standing on the horizon. Port buildings in the hazy sun, storage tanks miles away looming large and impressive, possibly ugly too in different weather conditions, very ugly indeed, but not today. I was quite a distance away from them, they were too far for me to walk to and shake the hand of Lord Gorleston, maybe some other time I would get to do that one. Got to the end of the path beside Pleasure Beach then cut in to walk back along the seafront strip, by the roadside this time where Albie’s Taxis and a statue of Lord Nelson in an open square marked the furthest point south I would walk that day. Good to make it as far as I had, good just to be alive beneath the eastern sky soaking up the rays of a warm October sun, where the living of my life span almost brought tears to my eyes.

on my way

thought my luck was run
coin in the sky unending,
statue of a hero close by
proved to be the choker
and so very transcendental,
almost melted by the sun
in well oiled ascension

Now it was time for me to turn around, to walk back along the main part of the seafront strip. To Casino Land, Amusement City, all those other glitter dens of promise and endless enticement, and where because the weather was so good things felt more than a little fantastic. By this point I had taken off my shirt due to the heat, just walking along in my t-shirt, a Rolling Stones size XL which had been bought for me a couple of months ago from Next. It was a t-shirt authorised by the band, officially sanctioned so as to pull in a few more bucks for The Glimmer Twins, as if they needed the money. Walking back along the seafront I passed a pub called The Barking Smack which seemed an incredibly strange name for a boozer, until I looked it up on Google later on and found that smacks were early days trawlers, making their way out of Old English ports like Yarmouth, Barking, Brixham and Scarborough. And there was I, thinking it was a name for heroin shipped up from East London to be sold in Great Yarmouth alleyways and yards in the form of Barking Smack.

Cutting in from the seafront I hit the side streets in order to find my way to the centre of town, also to find the Time and Tide Museum, a place which provided a history of Great Yarmouth, or so it said on the Net. The streets I walked down gave off old town echoes from when it must still have been an attractive seaside resort, somewhat different to what it is today, more genteel possibly back then, not so blown out or blown away by those passing years which have relentlessly kept on rollin’. It did not take me long to find the Time and Tide, and whilst it all looked very interesting, there was the small matter of a £5.95 fee to get in, something which I thought was a pretty steep price to pay on such a nice sunny day. It would have meant staying inside for an hour at the very least, in order for me to feel that I had come anywhere near getting my money’s worth, but as the weather was so good I didn’t fancy spending that amount of time and tide inside, so decided instead to just keep on walking.