Caister-on-Sea to Gorleston-on-Sea

I was looking forward to getting out for a walk today; I really needed a break. After weather that had either been wet or very cold, the forecast for today was better, with sunshine and a temperature above freezing. However, we were not particularly looking forward to the walk through Great Yarmouth, so our feelings were mixed. We certainly didn't want to have to walk twice through the industrial bit in Southtown, to the west of the River Yare, so we decided to take both cars. We left home a bit after 8 am; it felt milder as we defrosted the cars (currently kept on the drive because we are waiting for new garage doors). However, it dropped to minus 3 degrees Celsius on the drive, which meant I couldn't clean the windscreen en route. This, coupled with driving towards the Sun, which was low in the sky, made it rather difficult to see at times, and I didn't enjoy the drive. However, the walk itself was considerably better than I'd expected (the photo shows the mouth of the Yare).

We parked one car  in the Marine Parade carpark  (free!) at the southern extremity of Gorleston (TG531022) then drove in the other back across the Braydon Bridge, with lovely views inland across Brayden Water, then through the outskirts of Great Yarmouth and up to Caister.  The car park we used in Caister (TG526126) was also free; we'd spotted it when walking past on our  last leg of the walk, back in April 2022 . The access to the car park is slightly odd: down Braddock Road to the end, then straight across Eastern Avenue. The other people who were parking here mostly seemed to be dog walkers who headed straight down to the beach; we went that way too,  and after a false start caused by two flat battery packs, I took some photos. However our route back to Caister Lifeboat Station (which is where we got to when we were last here) was along a rather boring track then a road, some distance away from the seafront. 

The Caister lifeboats are run independently and there are actually two lifeboat stations here (possibly one houses the inshore rescue boat and one houses the main lifeboat, though I'm not entirely sure). There is building work going on, to adapt the lifeboat station for the new lifeboat that is due for delivery later in the year. The lifeboats are launched by tractor (inevitably given the drifting sand) and I think a new lifeboat also requires a new tractor and launching system, so that has to be housed too. A path down the side of the second (older?) lifeboat station led to the onward route of the Coast Path., at the back of the beach. We followed along, meandering our way though the dunes, with good views to the Scroby Sands Wind Farm offshore. Inland, the views were over Caister including to the attractive older part around the Parish Church. 

We'd soon left Caister behind and were in the "North Denes" area of Great Yarmouth. There is a complete succession of dunes here, with an increasingly wide area of vegetation between us and the sea. Inland, we passed the golf course and the racecourse, and we soon reached a caravan park. It is described as a  "caravan park" on the OS map,  but we were sure that the word "caravan"  wouldn't  feature in descriptions used by the owners of the park. We were right; this is Haven's Seashore Holiday Park, though it was interesting to see that the notices that had been left on the individual static vans sometimes used the word "caravan".  We headed slightly closer to the coast near the lookout station. There were still Norfolk Coast Path signs, but we were now walking on the pavement by the coast road.

After about a kilometre, our route was signposted off the road and closer to the sea. To our right were "The Waterways", with a  boating lake and then a meandering "Venetian waterway".  Richard's 97-year old  mother remembers this artificial river and staying in a hotel nearby, around the time of her cousin Jennifer's birth. in 1936. There are still many hotels on the other side of the road.  This area had a genteel, old-fashioned feel to it, but all too soon we reached Great Yarmouth's rather tackier "Golden Mile" though I prefer it in winter (i.e. today) than on busier days, like when we walked down to the seafront at the end of the Wherryman's Way in May 2021- and I don't think I have ever been in the middle of the summer.  We'd also reached the Britannia Pier, which we were now approaching, at the end of the Weavers' Way in October 2010 and we'd followed on from the Weavers Way onto the Angles Way in November 2010 (not coming down to the seafront on that occasion).  So we had now connected the England Coast Path to all of those routes.

Great Yarmouth is built on a split, so If you continue walking along the beach here you'd eventually reach a port area, but then you'd be stuck, with no way across the mouth of the River Yare.  So, shortly after passing underneath the Britannia Pier, we left the coast and headed inland, towards the (to my eye) much more attractive old town area. Great Yarmouth, like other towns I can think of, though perhaps more obviously so here, is a curious mixture, with interesting historic buildings abutting what look to be areas of extreme poverty . The route of the Coast Path took us past the attractive St George's Park, so we stopped here for an early lunch, sitting on a bench near the war memorial watching a woman tidying the wreaths which had been placed around it, while a small child toddled around her. A couple of seagulls soon found us, but there was no way we were going to encourage them by feeding them, and fortunately their behaviour was more amusing than troublesome (as, sadly, is sometimes the case).

We continued past St George's, built as a church but now a theatre and wedding venue, and on down to the South Quay. with is firmly to the east of the River and  frequently described as the "historic South Quay". Once upon a time there would be many fishing boats moored here; today there was just the  Lydia Eva, the world's last steam-powered herring drifter, built in 1930. The Lydia Eva is now open to the public (free) from April to October, and available for (distinctly not free) trips out to sea. Set back from the Quay are some fine old houses, including the National Trust's Elizabethan House Museum, built in the 16th Century. 

The river that carries the water from Braydon Water to the North Sea is the River Yare (hence "Yarmouth"), though the rivers Yare, Waveney and Bure all feed into it. We crossed the river by way of the Haven Bridge and, after passing Matalan,  we turned left onto Southtown Road. This was the least attractive section of the walk, and the bit we hadn't looked forward to. However, after a kilometre or so of walking through a mostly residential area, with builders merchants etc between us and the river to our left, it got more interesting.  We passed Alicat ("specialist providers of bespoke marine and engineering services") on the left-hand side, with some interesting-looking ships (including North Sea service vessels) in the process of refit. Then we reached roadworks and realised that some of the cranes around here are being used to construct the Third River Crossing, due to open later in 2023. Through the roadwork barriers, we could see another crane loading The Putford Saviour, sometimes described as a fire-fighting vessel and sometimes, less glamorously, as an offshore supply vessel. By the time we looked the name up, back at home in the evening, she had left Yarmouth docks and was out at sea.

As we'd walked through the roadworks, we'd needed to cross the road a couple of times to use the pavement on the other side, and we had begun to wonder if we'd be able to turn left to keep close to the river, as the road we were on curved away from it - but all was well. I'd thought that the name Gorleston just referred to the area at the mouth of the river, still around a mile further south, but I was wrong; we were soon in the residential part of Gorleston, which had a more genteel feel than Great Yarmouth. Suddenly we found ourselves passing Manby House, one-time residence of Captain George William Manby. I don't expect many readers of this page (assuming, perhaps optimistically, that there are more readers than Richard and me)) will have heard of Captain Manby, but he was born in a house almost opposite to ours in West Norfolk,  so we are very familiar with the name. His main claim to fame is to have invented a device for firing a rope to rescue shipwrecked mariners, and apparently he also invented a type of fire extinguisher.

We descended right down to the river front, which opened up views back towards Yarmouth and onwards towards the river mouth. We continued south, passing Great Yarmouth Power Station on the other side of the river, and in front of it, another offshore supply boat, the Mainport Geo.  We also walked right the Gorleston Volunteer Lifeboat House, a lovely historic building, with the modern Great Yarmouth and Gorleston Lifeboat Station still on the same site. It wasn't far now to the point where the river curves to its mouth and close-by was Gorleston Range Rear Lighthouse. I thought as we passed that it is a discussed lighthouse, but it appears to be still very much in use, presumably guiding ships into the river mouth. Of more practical use to us, right now, was the nearby toilet block, and as we reached the coast with its long expanse of sand stretching south, was the Marine Bay Café with a kiosk and outdoor seating. They served us hot drinks in proper mugs; perfect!

After finishing our drinks we walked along the promenade above the lovely beach back to the car park. I'm not sure I would have spotted the right place to leave the promenade, but Richard was more observant and got exactly the right place (in case you use the same car park, you need to head back to it when you reach a row of beach huts).  We had a good journey back to collect the other car and then a rather more pleasant return drive from Caister to home,  on a different route across the Broads to the A47 at Acle. Almost inevitably, the sun was slightly low in the sky again, but not as troublesome as it had been this morning.

On our walk around the England Coast, we are  still about a mile from the Norfolk/Suffolk border, but we haven't spotted any suitable parking close to the county boundary, so we'll wait until this part of the Suffolk section of the coast path is open before completing the final leg.