THE sky is banded in bold strata of many hues. Beneath a blood-orange sunrise, the otherworldly madness of a curlew cry is all I have for company as my little boat slips silently into the mirrored estuary. The tide —visible via the urgent riffles that swell and spin past—is reaching its spring zenith, a barely credible 13ft, all told. I’m sliding gently across the saltwater, up only one inlet of the myriad forgotten creeks surrounding Norfolk’s fabled and crustacean-laden, saltmarsh-ringed coastline.
A boat without an engine, sailing on the timeless power of wind and tide, is an ancient thrill and a silent one. Today’s crew —skipper Henry Chamberlain, Royal Marine comrades Ian Finch and Charlie Hodson, science writer Zoe Dunford and surfer and designer Colin Herbert Powell—is chipper, delighted to be out here at 5.30 am on a chill and mesmeric morn after promised 40mph winds faded away with the blackness of night. I’ve left the comfort of 18th-century Barn Drift, with its insulated warmth and sneak peek of white-horse waves through the pines, for a day on the saltmarsh and mudflats with the Coastal Exploration Company (CEC).
It’s a recently founded Norfolk company with vintage values. With three unique and refurbished antique wooden fishing boats— today’s is a 1950s crabber—the company leads mystery tours, family excursions, smuggling adventures, and more in and around Wells-next-the-Sea.
Denne historien er fra April 29, 2020-utgaven av Country Life UK.
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Denne historien er fra April 29, 2020-utgaven av Country Life UK.
Start din 7-dagers gratis prøveperiode på Magzter GOLD for å få tilgang til tusenvis av utvalgte premiumhistorier og 9000+ magasiner og aviser.
Allerede abonnent? Logg på
Save our family farms
IT Tremains to be seen whether the Government will listen to the more than 20,000 farming people who thronged Whitehall in central London on November 19 to protest against changes to inheritance tax that could destroy countless family farms, but the impact of the good-hearted, sombre crowds was immediate and positive.
A very good dog
THE Spanish Pointer (1766–68) by Stubbs, a landmark painting in that it is the artist’s first depiction of a dog, has only been exhibited once in the 250 years since it was painted.
The great astral sneeze
Aurora Borealis, linked to celestial reindeer, firefoxes and assassinations, is one of Nature's most mesmerising, if fickle displays and has made headlines this year. Harry Pearson finds out why
'What a good boy am I'
We think of them as the stuff of childhood, but nursery rhymes such as Little Jack Horner tell tales of decidedly adult carryings-on, discovers Ian Morton
Forever a chorister
The music-and way of living-of the cabaret performer Kit Hesketh-Harvey was rooted in his upbringing as a cathedral chorister, as his sister, Sarah Sands, discovered after his death
Best of British
In this collection of short (5,000-6,000-word) pen portraits, writes the author, 'I wanted to present a number of \"Great British Commanders\" as individuals; not because I am a devotee of the \"great man, or woman, school of history\", but simply because the task is interesting.' It is, and so are Michael Clarke's choices.
Old habits die hard
Once an antique dealer, always an antique dealer, even well into retirement age, as a crop of interesting sales past and future proves
It takes the biscuit
Biscuit tins, with their whimsical shapes and delightful motifs, spark nostalgic memories of grandmother's sweet tea, but they are a remarkably recent invention. Matthew Dennison pays tribute to the ingenious Victorians who devised them
It's always darkest before the dawn
After witnessing a particularly lacklustre and insipid dawn on a leaden November day, John Lewis-Stempel takes solace in the fleeting appearance of a rare black fox and a kestrel in hot pursuit of a pipistrelle bat
Tarrying in the mulberry shade
On a visit to the Gainsborough Museum in Sudbury, Suffolk, in August, I lost my husband for half an hour and began to get nervous. Fortunately, an attendant had spotted him vanishing under the cloak of the old mulberry tree in the garden.
