Slack Jawed Babbling

1959 was a notable year in Sheringham because British Railways closed almost the entire Norfolk network of the Midland & Great Northern railway system. The move sent shock waves throughout East Anglia and the railway community nationwide. It was merely a prelude to the savagery of Dr Beeching’s axe to be wielded in the early ‘60’s. Sheringham, a town that had grown as a popular seaside resort on the back of its busy railway hub, became the lonely terminus for a solitary remaining branch line from Norwich. Everything north and west was closed. Even this tenuous transport connection to civilization was under threat. In 1968, the council had to step in with investment save the line from complete closure on the basis that the road infrastructure was so bad. One could be forgiven for thinking that time has stood still. In many ways, Sheringham remains in 1959. On a visit in 2016, I was charmed to see that, despite those brutal rail closures, the original Sheringham station remains i...

One chilly Friday morning in 2016 I was on the way to Berko station and became distracted by the sign outside our M&S.   F OD HALL it proclaimed in two-foot high letters. I attempted to engage a young man with a mirthful witticism. He was bent over a large vowel swathed in clear plastic which he was slicing off with a knife ready to re-attach to the sign above the entrance. "Got any ‘O’s?" I lobbed. The sign-smith gave me a look of total confusion. The appeal of the classic Two Ronnies sketch was clearly a generational thing. The wrong cultural references. I didn’t think it was worth inquiring about fork ‘andles… On the train to Doncaster (a small diversion… I promise we are still on the way to the seaside), I found myself channelling a shot of grumpy bastard as I tried to navigate through too many self-important passengers in order to find my seat. "I'm so busy!” shouted a woman into her phone, stood in the vestibule at the end of Car C. Blocking access in...

If you turn south from Scarborough, instead of the craggy, dramatic moors pitching lemming-like into impossibly tiny, inaccessible bays (already celebrated in last week’s post on North Yorkshire), the coastline becomes more varied. This is because, as my junior geology encyclopedia confirms, the ironstone and sandstone bedrock of the lower Jurassic geological epoch (what a great word, especially for a Collins-edition children’s book) gives way to chalks of a later period. Geology plays a big hand in the framing of the next town down the coast. Filey Bay is capped to the north by a narrow peninsula that extends into the North Sea for a mile or so, known as Filey Brigg. Like any other large geological feature in the land, there are various myths and legends that account for its unusual appearance. Take the Hole of Horcum or Roseberry Topping, both the Devil’s work, it is claimed. My favourite is a tale that the rocks of Filey Brigg were once the spine of a dragon who terrorized the ar...

Where better to start than Scarborough? If anywhere represents the physical manifestation of coastal beauty-and-the-beast, it is here. Where wealth meets poverty; rich history clashes with modern veneer and bald fact jostles with bold opinion. The town claims to be the birthplace of the holiday resort and thus provides some solid journey-beginning credentials. That it is also the place of my birth offers some personal grounding. Scarborough sits at the edge of the spare, hauntingly bleak (that's a good thing) North York Moors and opens up to a cinematic view over a wide double-bay where the Norman Castle sitting precariously on the outcrop, divides the two coves. This vista has – seriously – been compared to the Bay of Naples. Locals call the place Scarbados. Gotta love the brass neck. The town is the County’s largest resort, growing from a Spa that threw open its doors to a sulphurous world in the 1660’s. When Restoration-era health tourism was born. Scarborough never looked ...

  What's it all about? “…A country tended to seep to its coast; it was concentrated there,  deposited against its beaches like the tide-wrack from the sea.  People naturally gravitated to the coast - and they wore fewer clothes there.”     Paul Theroux Joanna Lumley played it for laughs and layered-up warmth; Neil Oliver and Nicholas Crane majored on geology, history and umbrellas; and Paul Theroux did it with irascibility and irritation. I’m going to have a bash too: round Britain’s coastline in bite-size blogs and snaps, cherry-picking the best bits and ignoring the rest. The blogs that follow have been gathered over many years and are stitched together here in a time-shift ramble. The title for the collection is shamelessly nicked from the cheesy light entertainment variety show that ran for five years in the 70’s, broadcast each week in the season from a big top pitched in the car parks and recreation fields of holiday resorts around the country. Se...