Day One

Saturday 19 June – Lowestoft to Beccles.

I started walking an hour late, courtesy of National Express (poor train service division). Because of engineering work, the itinerary I had booked was for train travel to Norwich, connecting to a bus service to Lowestoft. Except that it didn’t – connect, that is. The train was five minutes late, and the bus just went. Despite the fact that it is a rail replacement service, no attempt is made to coordinate the bus with the trains. This was hardly a shock – National Express have already forfeit the East Coast franchise because they couldn’t manage it, and they are just waiting to lose the East Anglia one as well, meanwhile simply going through the motions.

But after that things went according to plan. A ten minute walk took me to Lowestoft Ness, the Easternmost place in England and the Grand Ceremonial Starting Place (!) for my walk to St David’s Head, the Westernmost place in Wales. Actually there was little ceremony; the biting North wind and the first of a series of very short showers did not encourage me to linger on the North Sea coast. The concrete promenade is protected by huge boulders, so a quick dip of my toes in the sea was not possible, but the large stone disc marking the Ness was washed by the remnants of wind-whipped waves, so I trod quickly in a dribble of foam and hurried away.

The seaside-y bit of Lowestoft is further South, beyond the docks and harbour (which looks like the mouth of a river but isn’t). The harbour’s connected to Lake Lothing, Lake Lothing’s connected to Oulton Broad, Oulton Broad’s connected to the foot bone – sorry, got carried away. Oulton Broad is joined to the River Waveney by the Oulton Dyke. Don’t try to remember all that – it’s all part of the work carried out since the Seventeenth Century to connect up the Broads, lakes formed by the flooding of peat excavations, into a navigable network for trade. So while the Waveney flows North to join with the Yare and reach the sea at Great Yarmouth, the quicker route to the sea is through all of the above-mentioned bodies of water. Enough history for now? OK, let’s press on.

The back streets of Lowestoft are dull but not unpleasant. They led me to my first footpath of the day, which took me alongside a recreation ground, past a small lake, and through a scruffy collection of businesses serving the port, emerging at Oulton Broad. This is a lake, of course, but also a village which has been absorbed by Lowestoft. Two lifting bridges take vehicles and pedestrians, respectively, across the neck of the Broad; these were lifting as I approached, to allow a pleasure boat to pass into Lake Lothing. The pedestrians’ bridge is self-service – a polite but disembodied voice from the control point asks the people at the front of the queue to open the gates.

I had now joined the Angles Way. This route was devised by members of the Ramblers Association to connect up with the Peddars Way and Norfolk Coast Path, thus providing a 227-mile circular walk around Norfolk (although, as we shall see, it is often in Suffolk). I was planning to use the Angles Way, with variations, for the next four days’ walking. So I lost it almost immediately in a maze of narrow private roads through a Hoseasons Holiday Park.

I ended up on a path along the South side of the lake. This clearly doubled up as a flood relief barrier. Those wiggly, interconnected plates you see lining canals had been pile-driven into the marshy ground, sometimes on both sides of the path, with a fill of rubble, shale and chippings. I found the Angles Way again, which pursued a more cautious route some distance from the water, which it left altogether to cut the corner between Oulton Dyke and the River Waveney, which I then followed upstream for the rest of the day.

Again the path was along the flood bank, but behind the protective plates it was here just a simple earth bank, cracked and running to holes after the recent lack of rain. I had to be careful where I put my feet. I was not taking as many photos as usual (sighs of relief all round). The landscape is, in its own way, lovely, but it’s mostly of one colour, which is green, and it’s mostly flat, so one riverside picture is much the same as the next.

A dog and owner approached me. As the dog charged towards me, the woman stumbled after it, muttering “sorry” to me and shouting ineffectually at the dog. I walked past them both. As I felt teeth make contact with the back of my leg, I pulled away with milliseconds to spare. Again the woman mumbled an apology, hopelessly rushing after the now-distant dog. I know it’s not the dog’s fault but, in the absence of capital punishment for the owners, I will be renewing my subscription to the Kill a Dog a Day Campaign.

Castle Marsh, in a loop of the river, is a managed nature reserve. The management consists of flooding the marsh during the Winter, thereby attracting one lot of birds, then draining it again in the Spring, when the Winter birds have pushed off and a new clientele arrives. Cunning, huh?

Most of the river traffic consists of small cruisers and hire craft of the type which looks as though someone very large had trodden on a caravan and plonked it on a plastic barge. But as I approached Beccles, serious yachting was happening, crews battling heroically with the strong and blustery wind.

Beccles New Bridge carries the main road, while the remaining purpose of the Old Bridge seems to be to limit the size of boat which can travel further upstream. The area between the bridges is marinafied, but the town itself is not excessively boaty. Narrow streets have been made into a one-way system, with the usual results – cars hurtle round like Formua 1 competitors, engine noise bouncing off the old buildings. The town centre itself is not overrun with traffic. Small shops still survive alongside the usual retail suspects.

Later, as I walked around the town after my supper, a cloaked horse rider attracted my attention. People in historic costume, including Elizabeth I, no less, were parading round the streets, or just lingering near the church. A gaggle of people without fancy dress was following a man holding up a speaker which broadcast a commentary. I had happened on the History Walk, complete with living characters from Beccles’s past. As soon as the punters were out of sight, the costumed folk all pushed off, probably anxious to get out of the posh frocks and get into something more appropriate for a Saturday evening on the town or in front of the telly.