Cromer to Trimingham and return

We'd spent Christmas by ourselves which should, in theory, have given us plenty of opportunity for walking, but unfortunately the weather had other ideas. There had been some rain each day and yesterday had been really wet, and the weather forecast for most of the country was not good for today or tomorrow. It was a no-brainer to ditch our idea of a two-day break back on the Midshires Way, However, we were also aware that there was a "new" [to us] section of the Norfolk Coast Path, also forming part of the England Coast Path, to the east of Cromer. And today's weather forecast for Cromer was reasonable. So it was to Cromer that we drove this morning. It's a fair journey (about 1 hour 20 minutes) so we decided to just take one car. We parked in the Meadow Road Car park (£1.30 for the first hour and £1 for each subsequent hour, with a maximum of £7 for 24 hours).

We set off walking around 9.45, heading down to the promenade just to the west of Cromer's famous pier and walking along to it. The tide seemed quite high, though actually it transpired that high tide wasn't until 12.18. The pier was open so we walked onto it, which gave us good views in all directions. There was some hazy sunshine, though we were aware that the mist might thicken (it did!). We also had good views down to some surfers. The Paston Way heads east from the pier along the promenade; I suspect that technically the Coast Path takes a higher route initially, but we didn't let this bother us (and the Coast Path joined us very soon). We passed fishing boats on trailers , the inshore lifeboat station (the "all weather" lifeboat is in the lifeboat station at the end of the pier) and the Henry Blogg RNLI Museum. We stopped for a few minutes to watch the surfers, then continued past the North Sea Coffee Co., which was doing a roaring trade, serving coffee to dog-walkers, and on past chalets and beach huts of various types.

The concrete of the promenade soon ran out; the famous Cromer Banksy is somewhere near this point, though we managed to miss it completely. We began our walk along the beach to Overstrand underneath the "cliffs" which the Joint Nature Conservaton Committee describe as "one of the best examples of unprotected vegetated soft cliffs on the North Sea coast in the most easterly part of the UK. The cliffs are up to 70 m high and are composed of Pleistocene sands and clays with freshwater seepages in places and are subject to moderately frequent cliff-falls and landslips." The regular slumping of the cliffs mean that they don't really look much like cliffs, apart from what looks like a chalk erratic part-way along. Walking along the beach was quite hard, as the state of the tide required us to walk over soft shingle or larger stones. However it was quite busy, mostly with dog-walkers.

We reached the concrete of the Overstrand promenade. The Paston Way climbs up to the village at this point and most of the other people went that way; we later discovered there is a car park and cafe at the top. We continued on the route of the coast path on the concrete upper promenade, over which the waves were breaking occasionally. It was fun! Eventually our route also climbed up into Overstrand, passing a cliff fall onto the access road from earlier in the year. The route then followed around residential roads and out towards Sidestrand before turning left onto a country lane which became a track and then a path, leading us back toward the cliff top near Sidestrand Hall.

For the next few miles the path follows the cliff top, though regular signs remind you to stay at least 5 metres from the edge and for most of the way we used an alternative path along the field edge some distance inland of the main rather muddy coast path. They are clearly moving the route to the path we used; it does rather beg the question of why anyone would have established a coast path that close to the edge in the first place, especially since we can categorically say that the path along here has been established more recently than 2006 (the date of our paper OS Explorer Sheet 252) and we suspect it was done ten years or so more recently. Incidentally, because most of our route for today was not on our paper copy of the OS map, we were using copies printed by virtue of my OS Maps subscription.

We made it safely to Trimingham, passing through a lovely (if muddy) little wood just before the village, then stopping for lunch of turkey sandwiches and Christmas cake at a picnic bench thoughtfully provided by the Deep History Coast exhibition outside the Pilgrim Shelter. After lunch we went for a closer look at the delightfully named Church of St John the Baptist's Head (named because during medieval times there was a life-sized alabaster head of the saint kept here). We then retraced our steps, taking the route of the Paston Way through Overstrand, thereby passing the bizarre Methodist chapel, which was designed by Lutyens. We reached the busy Cliff Top Cafe, with the main Overstrand car park nearby. We were looking for a footpath along the top of the cliff back to Cromer, which is shown on the current OS map, but we couldn't see it (maybe it has disappeared down the cliff) so we returned to the beach and walked back to Cromer that way. The tide was now going out, though at about the same level as it had been this morning, and the walking was perhaps slightly easier. The beach was even busier.

The weather had been deteriorating since we were in Trimingham and now it was definitely raining. However, before returning to the car we climbed up the ramp behind the pier to look at the signs at the top. Where we had previously photographed (most recently in October 2012) signs pointing along the Norfolk Coast Path to Hunstanton (47 mikes) and along the Weavers' Way to Great Yarmouth (61 miles), there was now an extra sign along the Norfolk Coast Path to Sea Palling (18 miles). In fact, the Norfolk Coast Path now goes even further, and apparently, when the route of the England Coast Path around the Norfolk coast is complete, this will comprise 113 miles of walking. It is slightly irritating when a path that we have finished gets substantially altered, as in this case. There again, it has opened up more walking opportunities for us in our own home county.

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