Ness

Yesterday we drove to the enchanting coastal village of Orford and took a ferry across the narrow sea channel that divides the village from Orford Ness.

Orford Ness is a vast, treeless island of marshland and shingle. Nowadays it is mostly a nature reserve overseen by The National Trust. However, through history it has seen many episodes - often connected with military matters. 

Back in the nineteen fifties it hosted several vast and secret bunkers that were connected with the development of nuclear weaponry. Men and women in white coats stood behind banks of  dials as Britain and her allies contemplated a brutal modern war with The Soviet Union.

Nuclear bunker - Orford Ness

There's a lot of military debris on Orford Ness and some areas remain prohibited because of unexploded bombs.  I walked in the ruin of a nuclear testing laboratory and felt grateful that we left those awful Cold War times behind us... Didn't we?

How many pebbles are there on Orford Ness? Zillions of them. I found several with holes - eroded right through and I thought that somewhere on that windswept island there is probably a perfectly spherical pebble but you could spend many lifetimes searching for it.

It's a strange landscape of seaside vegetation and bits of concrete and metal as geese honk overheard and a wary heron flies off . Of course we visited the seaward eighteenth century lighthouse that gets closer to the North Sea each winter and must one day, like the rest of us, submit to the inevitable.

Handwoven hassock (kneeling cushion) in Orford Church

Seaside

I snapped this photograph on Sunday afternoon as we strolled along Southwold seafront.

On the wall
CHELSEA So what's in your sandwich?
WHITNEY I've got roasted llama and pomegranate with  chicory.
CHELSEA Mine's Sicilian sun-blessed tomatoes with mature Swiss goat's cheese and Hampshire water cress.

At the hole
BRETT Come on Jordan! Keep passing the sand. We've got to finish burying him before the sea comes up.
JORDAN But he's your little brother! Why should I have to do all the work Brett?
BRETT Well I helped you to bury your grandma yesterday! So get moving you lazy arse!

At the wooden groyne (sea defence)
MAUREEN Don't look now Dave but there's a fellow with a camera over there.
DAVE What's he doing?
MAUREEN Taking pictures of course. Oo! He's a handsome devil!
DAVE I hope my missus doesn't see em.
MAUREEN And I hope my Bob doesn't either.
DAVE Where does Bob think you are?
MAUREEN I told him I was going to stay with my sister Briony in Brighton.
DAVE I told my missus I was going fishing on the Norfolk Broads with the lads.
MAUREEN Tell her you caught a big trout!
DAVE More like a killer whale!
DAVE and MAUREEN  Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha!

Hoo

Hoo = spur of a hill (Anglo Saxon)

Replica of helmet found at Sutton Hoo
The original is in The British Museum

Back in the nineteen thirties, Edith Pretty would often sit in the drawing room of her Edwardian mansion - Tranmer House. To the north west was the Suffolk market town of Woodbridge - just across the estuary of The River Deben but on the landward side of her property, beyond the woods Edith Pretty could see some curious hummocks. She often wondered about these mounds and in 1938 her curiosity finally got the better of her.

She contacted Suffolk Museum Services in Ipswich and before very long she employed the services of a local self-taught archaeologist - Basil Brown. Investigating the hummocks in 1939, Brown unearthed something amazing - an entire Viking ship and within it various Anglo Saxon artefacts connected with a royal burial. Who warranted such a burial? Perhaps it was an early Anglo Saxon king - Rædwald or his son Eorpwald . In the seventh century they ruled this part of England.

Burial Mound 2 at Sutton Hoo

What an endeavour it must have been to drag that heavy ship up from the river estuary! 

The Anglo Saxons began to arrive in England soon after the Romans left our shores early in the fifth century. Gradually, they filled the void, integrating with local people. Their customs were adopted - even their language. The eastern part of our island became The Land of the Angles - Angleland or England.

Unlike the Romans those early Anglo Saxon colonisers left little of physical substance behind so the discoveries at Sutton Hoo were very special. They taught historians so much more about our Anglo Saxon ancestors - how they lived, what they valued, their culture and their craftsmanship. The echoes of their presence remain to this day. For example, my real surname and the name of the village where I was born are both Anglo Saxon in origin. 

Giant version of the helmet
above the visitor centre entrance

Huts

We don't have many beach huts on the Yorkshire coast. Consequently, the very idea of a beach hut is not embedded in the collective memory of Yorkshire families. However, in Southwold on the Suffolk coast there are lots of beach huts - owned I expect by people who live inland and come to the coast for leisurely days out.

Billy Bumpkin and Edward III

What is a beach hut? I know that visitors from foreign climes will be puzzled. Well, it's essentially a large and colourful garden shed that is situated close to the beach. Inside you will find seats, a table, beach items and perhaps a worktop with a camping stove. There is never any electricity or a water supply. The beach huts act as day bases for families or couples. They sit and read or run from the beach hut down to the shoreline. They laze their days away breathing in the sea air.

No. 156 - a beach hut called Doris

Recently a Southwold beach hut exchanged hands for £120,000 - $154,000 US.

Yesterday we left Clint in the village of Walberswick and took a rowing boat ferry across the mouth of the River Blyth. Then we walked half a mile into Southwold. It is a splendid seaside resort with a long sandy beach, a pier, a beautiful parish church, an excellent  little museum  as well as the usual pubs and fish and chip shops. The town has a feeling of genteel affluence.

Beach huts north of Southwold Pier

And there are beach huts. Lots of them. Each one looks a little different from the rest. They have been personalised and they often have quirky names. Being a shy sort of fellow, I was reluctant to take any pictures of people sitting in open beach huts. Besides, one doesn't wish to risk a fight while snapping seaside photographs.

Ma's Bar

Down at The River Blyth, before we were rowed back to Walberswick, I noticed a different kind of beach hut on the riverside. Tarred working huts for fishermen. They did not have names or deliberate ornamentation but I liked them just the same. In the picture below you can just make out Southwold's white lighthouse in the distance.

Suffolk

We are staying in the village of Aldringham. Our modern accommodation is the north wing of a house built in 2000. It is just about perfect for our needs and we are the very first renters. From our deck we see pylons marching away westwards from their starting place at Sizewell B.

Yesterday was a lovely, summery day. Shirley wanted to visit a car boot sale and via the magic of the internet I found one at nearby Friday Street Farm. There were hundreds of sellers there selling all manner of things from wigs to African carvings, from children's clothes to lawnmowers. There were hundreds of visitors too.

I bought two very small ceramic pigs, a bag of Suffolk apples and a biography of Hannah Hauxwell - the legendary Yorkshire farmer and stoic.

The Family of Man by Barbara Hepworth (1970)
at Snape Maltings

St John the Baptist Church in Snape

Then we went on to Snape and Snape Maltings which was once a riverside  industrial complex but is now a varied campus of art galleries, eateries, shops, holiday flats and a concert hall. It was all done very well and we enjoyed our visit there.

Next we travelled on to the seaside town of Aldeburgh - a delightful place. Made all the better because we parked Clint for free so did not have to scrabble for loose change or keep looking at our watches. Aldeburgh was once the home of composer Benjamin Britten and now hosts an annual festival of music.

The Sallop by Maggi Hambling on Aldeburgh Beach

After Aldeburgh we drove on to Thorpeness - a smaller seaside place without the services that coastal visitors seem to require. However, we purchased glasses of Suffolk ale in "The Dolphin" and as  the afternoon was  warm as honey  we sat outside in the pub garden watching the world go by.

It was our first full day in Suffolk, made glorious by the sunshine here at the end of our remarkable English summer.

Contentment on Aldeburgh Beach

Sizewell

Well here we are on the Suffolk coast in eastern England , miles from home. Last evening we drove a couple of miles to the beach at Sizewell. This name is familiar to all English people as it is home to a pair of nuclear power stations - imaginatively named Sizewell A and Sizewell B. Sizewell C is still under consideration.

I would have given them different names - perhaps old-fashioned women's names - Rosemary, Jennifer and Doreen - after my late mother. This would have helped improve public attitudes to the site.

Offshore there are two ugly platform towers. You can see them in my last picture. They are connected with Sizewell A's water cooling system. One tower is over the inlet pipe and the other is above the outlet. By the way, Sizewell A was decommissioned in 2006. 

At the beach cafe I noticed a rather disturbing portrait of cafe customers painted on the black chalkboard outside. You can see them in the third photograph. They appear to be power station workers - their appearances badly affected  - presumably by radiation. If that picture was meant to tempt us inside I am afraud it didn't work.

Close to the power station a small family huddled behind a blue beach umbrella and further along the shingle strand two men were sea fishing. The creatures they brought in were illuminated by radiation and monstrous too. I made the last bit up.

Masterpiece

After reading "Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine" by Gail Honeyman, the next novel I picked up was "My Absolute Darling" by Gabriel Tallent. Perhaps the only thing that these two books have in common is that they are the writers' first published works.

I was blown away by the first few chapters of "My Absolute Darling". Set around Mendocino in northern California, the novel focuses on Turtle Alveston - a fourteen year old girl and her emotionally disturbed father, Martin. In those early chapters every word seemed to count. They were like musical notes in a symphony of  observation.

We share Turtle's acute sense of her surroundings - the jagged coastline, the plant life and Martin's changing moods. Perhaps ominously, Turtle is forever dismantling and cleaning her guns. Martin has taught her how to shoot and the need to be ready when danger comes to call.

Her life is harsh like the dilapidated house she lives in - with mushrooms growing on the rotting window frame in the bathroom. We hear her inner voice - seeking understanding and forgiveness, struggling with terror and her very identity. 

It is excellent writing and there is little wonder that Stephen King has called this novel "a masterpiece". Arguably, as "My Absolute Darling" reaches its dramatic crescendo followed by some sense of resolution, the writing becomes a little less assured than it was in those opening chapters. However, the story continued to grip me right to the end

It was a joy to sit out on our decking turning the pages. Gabriel Tallent lives in Salt Lake City and is a keen rock climber but he grew up in Mendocino and knows the landscape of his novel intimately. Surprisingly, he doesn't yet have a Wikipedia page but that situation surely won't last much longer. Hell, no - that fellow can write, really write. He made the Eleanor Oliphant book seem like child's play in comparison. If Tallent avoids a fatal climbing accident his reputation as a writer can only grow.

The best novel I have read in a long time. I hope I haven't given away too much.

Gabriel Tallent