#norfolk beach

[jackrussell1907]

Norfolk Beach

United Kingdom

[bettylouiseme]

#THE HOUSE AT SEA’S END By Elly Griffiths PEACE Thanks to the Meridian library for my copy. The third book in the Ruth Galloway series take place 1940 and the fear of Germany invading England.

[our-optimisticwolfstudent-blog]

Man sentenced over £50m drugs haul find on Norfolk beach - BBC News A man who helped himself to cocaine that had washed up on a beach has been given a two year suspended sentence. James Underhill, 34, of Charles Close, Caister, Norfolk, described the £50m find in a text message as "Willy Wonka's golden ticket". The drugs haul was one of the largest ever found washed up on the UK coast. Underhill admitted at an earlier hearing to being concerned in the supply of cocaine and possession of cannabis with intent to supply.

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[troop2017]

Little Walsingham has a big history. Back in the 12th century a widow in the village convinced everybody that she had been visited by the Virgin Mary (see the story here). From this point on people made pilgrimages to the village meaning that there are now several churches, an abbey (now ruined) and a shrine to OLW (Our Lady of Walsingham) in the village.

Parking charges apply 24/7 so we paid for an hour and had a very pleasant wander around the village, taking in the parish church and the back road behind it back into the village, There are a couple of lovely looking pubs, the abbey gardens to visit (at £5 each), tea-rooms and a shrine shop.

I even managed to make my way up some of those floating steps – a bit of a challenge for me 🙂

We then moved on to Holkham Beach with the aim of lazing the afternoon away by the sea.  We didn’t know, until I posted a photo on Instagram, that there is a naturist area on the beach! It wasn’t until we’d paid to park (£5 for 4 hours with no option for the 3 that we wanted), that we found out the beach has no facilities – not even temporary toilets in the car park.

It was a ¾ mile walk down to the beach, through the pine forest and across the sands and the dunes to this amazing stretch of golden sands, with ponies galloping through the water channels that were wending their way down to the sea. With occasional patches of razor clam and oyster shells it was best to keep your footwear on!

We eventually settled on a spot high on a dune – actually Calv settled on it and I spent most of my time trying not to slide down it!! Instead I went into the water, not all the way in but I did get my bikini top wet… 😊

On the way back to the van we followed the A149 along the coast looking for a tearooms to grab a slice of cake in. We eventually found one in Burnham Deepdale – unfortunately being 4pm and with lots of people milling around in the sunshine it was, of course, closing…

So it was straight back to the van to sit in the sun for the last part of the day. The next day we were heading back to West Norfolk to see parts that we hadn’t yet seen 😊

Since Monday we’ve been staying in Hunstanton. Unfortunately our chosen site isn’t really the best for us, but it does have a swimming pool and we’ve got it for £16 per night… We’re at the southern end of Hunstanton and having been out for a bike ride last night (it’s now Thursday as I write this) we’ve discovered it gets nicer and nicer as you travel north. until eventually you find Old Hunstanton and the most wonderful beach – with facilities, beach huts nestled amongst the dunes, a hotel and pub, a café and miles of golden sand 😊

Our 1st impressions had been formed by a walk on the 1st evening in our immediate vicinity, showing rundown buildings, cheap fairground rides and amusements on the front, a not-particularly welcoming looking beach and a much nicer looking touring and static site next door!!

Calv had started feeling ill that same evening and on Tuesday he was really not well so, apart from a trip to Tesco (which he insisted on coming on, and I insisted on walking to) we did nothing. I did go for a swim in the morning to the session described as ‘Serious Swim’. A small pool and a number of people having a serious chat rather than a serious swim meant that it was difficult to swim properly so unfortunately I haven’t tried again ☹

The last couple of days have been really lovely though and in my next post I will tell you about Castle Rising and Sandringham as well as our couple of hours in Kings Lynn.

Little Walsingham and the Beautiful Beach at Holkham Little Walsingham has a big history. Back in the 12th century a widow in the village convinced everybody that she had been visited by the Virgin Mary (see the story…

[angelic-clouds]

The view from my hotel room

[erynontheroad-blog]

When I was 8 years old, my grandma Betsy sent me John Bunyan’s “The Pilgrim’s Progress” as an answer to learning that the book I’d most recently read was Jeffery Deaver’s “The Bone Collector.” It was the longest single-narrative I’d ever attempted to read and the most arduous text anyone could have given me at the time. Even the children’s books that had begun to bore me seemed more worthy of my time than reading about ye olde Christiana making her way across the ocean blue to bring god’s message to savage nations. 

Two things occur to me now as I sit thinking of this gift from my grandma. The first: my grandmother was the epitome of kindness. Her sweetness poured out from every inch of her being and she was genuine in all that she said and did. Being the 1950′s housewife that she had been, raised in post-World War II America and having seen boys become men during such a time brought her into womanhood as a timid, unassuming, god-fearing Christian woman. It also meant that she was terrified of change, feared the unknown, made no attempt to understand much that wasn’t seen as an integral part of her upbringing and therefore meant that as a grandmother to a Native American grandchild, the only context she had for the Indian in me was in direct reference to cowboys and pilgrims. 

The second thing I can now see is why my mother hated her so much (only for a time - when she was on her death bed Fran came to visit and Betsy called out to her saying, “my daughter is here”). My grandma wasn’t a bible-thumper but she DID love her Christian god more than life itself and could not imagine a world without Jesus Christ. Fran loved her in a way that only a daughter-in-law could love someone so different from herself but after years of prayer chains, stashed notes full of scripture and the not so occasional Christian text sent to a young, impressionable granddaughter...my mom had had enough. 

Before my copy of The Pilgrim’s Progress was unceremoniously donated to our local Arc Thrift Store, I was able to read one line that resonated with me. I like to think that Bets is out there in the ether, tickled to death about the fact that one part of the book found a home in my head. “Follow your heart,” Bunyan wrote. In spite of all the elders that I have lost over the years, one thing that I’ve always managed to do is that. 

After we left Ari’s colorful grandma in Richmond, we made our way out to Norfolk, VA; both determined to see the ocean. I accidentally booked our Air BnB for the wrong day and we ended up staying not with a host family of DND nerds on the water as planned, but in the home of a quiet family in Chesapeake. We went out that evening in search of food and found nothing open but a Buffalo Wild Wings. Entering the restaurant rather reluctantly, we found our table and looked around in mild horror as hundreds of patrons sat robotically shoveling food into their mouths as they stared at one of the fifty screens that surrounded the dining room. The white light emitting from the televisions made everyone look as though they were ghosts eating and the only noise that came from anyone was the occasional cheer or sneer as one team or another scored. 

We left quickly, not even taking the time to sit down and ate an uneventful meal at another meaningless chain. That night we promised ourselves to pack more foods we could eat in the event of another night like this. The next day we bought a sandcastle pack full of pails, shovels and castle molds and sat along the shore of the mellow Atlantic Ocean baking under a muggy heat. 

After a hot morning in Norfolk Beach, we made our way to Columbia Heights. Ari drove us into the city and we took turns pointing out monuments to each other. At one point, we drove past a building full of buses and kids on field trips and I wondered aloud what purpose the building served. “Maybe it’s the Pentagon,” Ari said. “Oh, that’s a possibility!” I replied. I didn’t realize that there was sarcasm dripping off her tongue as she spoke and soon we passed a sign with exits for the Pentagon. She giggled for a while after that and once we arrived at our friend Mary’s, I jumped out barefoot to parallel park the car.

Mary, who is also Jicarilla, is an exemplary woman. She worked for the Navajo Nation for many years and is now an attorney for the United States Department of the Interior National Indian Gaming Commission. Her apartment is in a bustling part of the city that is covered in pottery, rugs, blankets and other memorabilia from home. Even though we’d only been gone just under a week, it was comforting to see familiar sights. She took us on a monument tour along the Washington Mall and said nothing as Ari and I both took turns flipping Lincoln off; commenting about his involvement with the Indian Removal Act and the orders he gave that caused the death of 38 Lakota men by hanging in 1862. There were teachers with their classes who saw us and told their students that they were proud that none of them were so disrespectful. I didn’t want to start an argument but ended up saying, “He may have been the Great Emancipator but he was no friend of the indigenous peoples of the United States” before walking away. 

Our tour of the mall led us past the National Gallery of Art’s Sculpture Garden, the Lincoln Memorial, around the Washington Monument, through the National World War II Memorial gardens and lastly, to the Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial. When we approached the MLK Jr. statue, there were only a handful of people milling about. He stands facing the Potomac River, austere in stature and unaware of the consternation of the men in buildings behind him. He was there to fight for the people while the others memorialized lived for themselves and their glory; not for the good of all. I stared up at the doctor, carved in granite and couldn’t help but notice that Lei Yixin had captured the essence of the man. His eyes were kind but his folded arms showed his grit. He stands unwavering. Even in the absence of his physical presence, I could feel him there. If he were alive, he would be 87 years old and I can only imagine what he would say about the world around him. 

I imagined telling him about the loss of Tamir Rice or Trayvon Martin and think about my time in Ferguson mourning Michael Brown. Dr. King would have had the words that we all failed to find when these young men lost their lives. I thought about reading his speeches as a child and watching him speak to his followers. He was a great orator and I again mourned the coming loss of President Obama in office. 

My reverie was interrupted as Ari and Mary came to collect me to continue our trek. Six hours later after an unexpected and long walk, we slept. Our time with Mary passed quickly. She was an introvert but full of life. A dancer at heart and politely anxious for her visitors to leave so that she could again return to her late night bachata routine. Together we tried pupusas for the first time, sitting in a closet of a restaurant called Gloria’s Pupuseria while a painting of Selena and a photo of the Obamas with Oprah watched on. A nanny sat next to us, eating fervently as she held a fork in one hand and a baby mobile in the other. The white baby watched her bounce the mobile up and down, hypnotized by its it rhythm while her caretaker sat mesmerized by the telenovela on the single screen in the corner of the room. 

My friends talked while I watched our stout waitress serve tables of flirting, younger construction workers, all taking their turn at making the older woman blush. I wished in that moment that I spoke enough Spanish to understand what they were telling her. She was surely no less than 55 years old and the blush they’d given her spread clear to her ears. When the nanny settled her tab as the baby had begun to fuss, all the young men leapt to hold the door and help her lift her stroller up the stairs. People say that chivalry is dead, but I don’t believe this. I see the most recognition for elders and women within POC communities. The men, who had only moments earlier been boosting the ego of an aging women were now helping a nanny out of the restaurant. She turned and blessed them all at the top of the stairs before saying in Spanish, “Even as a baby, the whites demand.” They laughed together and she was off. 

--- cont’d.

[fairytalewoodland]

“I know what you want. It is very stupid of you, but you shall have your way, and it will bring you to sorrow, my pretty princess. - The sea witch.” ― Hans Christian Andersen, The Little Mermaid

[superbnature]

Seal pup by vinceburton http://ift.tt/1sh9M1B