Wells-next-the-Sea to Weybourne
Walked by Sally and Richard, Sunday 14th October 2012
About 16 miles of walking, mostly on Norfolk Coast Path
Click here for all our photos from this walk.
Today we walked off the map! Let me explain..we knew that we had to be on the Coasthopper bus back to Wells at something after 4.15pm because, now that the winter timetable is in operation, on a Sunday that is the last bus of the day. We had hoped to get to either Cley (pronounced 'Cly') or Salthouse, but we never thought we would get as far as Weybourne. So we left Boxwood Guest House with just one map - OS Explorer Sheet 251. This covers the vast majority of today's walk, but Weybourne is actually on the next sheet (252). It was a great walk, even though it rained In the afternoon, and an added bonus of walking further than planned was the variety of terrain that we covered - until today I would have put the Wells area, the Blakeney area and the shingle bank merging into cliffs from Weybourne into three completely different silos, but today we learnt how they are all part of one continuum.
We had smoked salmon and scrambled egg for breakfast, and bought provisions for lunch from the Nisa supermarket in Wells. Then we walked down to the quay. To my surprise the tide was still quite high, and the light was lovely, so we took yet more photographs. It was still quite early on a Sunday morning so, despite the sunny weather, there were not too many people about.
We left Wells by way of East Quay and soon found ourselves on a path at the back of the salt marshes, first Warham Greens and then Stiffkey Greens. This is serious bird watching territory, but I'm afraid we don't know much. We saw Brent geese, distinctive white egret-like birds and lots of waders, well camoflaged against the marshes. Across the marshes, there were views back to Wells Lifeboat Station, ahead to Blakeney Point and, when we climbed onto slightly higher land, we could see the sea and sand a kilometre or so away across the marshes.
We passed a small car park and paths back to Stiffkey (pronounced stew key) and then an atmospheric inlet (Freshes Creek) with an inland lake (Stiffkey Fen) which has only recently appeared on the map. As last time when we walked this section, the signposting on the approach to Morston was not great, and it would be quite easy to be 'lured onto the marshes' (a favourite phrase from the guidebook, though not here) straight towards the blue Old Lifeboat Station on Blakeney Point, but fortunately we knew that we needed to head further to the right, towards the National Trust observation platform at Morston Quay.
We stopped for a cup of tea at Morston Quay, then walked on to Blakeney, where we stopped for lunch. There were now plenty of people about, including families out crabbing from the quayside at Blakeney (one of the small children was not impressed - I suspect he was cold) and a selection of birds, one of which tried to eat a loaf of bread from the couple sitting next to us.
There were even more people as we walked around the sea wall to Cley, but somehow it didn't matter - this is a section of the path that we know very well and it was pleasant walking, as always. We followed the official route of the Norfolk Coast Path to Cley and around Cley Windmill, but we did not follow the route all the way down to the shingle bank at Cley Eye. Walking on, or behind, a shingle bank is not our idea of fun, so we decided to take the Jordan approved inland route instead (which we discovered because the official route was temporarily diverted this way back in 2002 when our edition of the National Trail guide was published).
We followed 'The skirts' along the back of the Cley Marshes Nature Reserve, stopping off for a cup of tea at the Norfolk Wildlife Trust visitor centre, then taking a path over the Walsey Hills (with lovely views) to Salthouse. We walked along the A149 through Salthouse, past the pond where we always had to stop to feed the ducks when the children were small. Finally we took a track ('Meadow Lane') back towards the coast, skirted the delightfully named 'Quag', and we were back on the official route of the Norfolk Coast Path at Kelling Hard.
It had been raining since soon after we left the NWT visitor centre at Cley and the wind and incoming tide meant the it was wonderfully atmospheric on the shingle bank, with waves crashing against the shingle. We walked along to Weybourne Hope, past various former military installations inland to our right - the steep slope of the shingle bank enables deep-draught boats to anchor close to shore, and there have been invasion scares since the time of Elizabeth I. We left the Norfolk Coast Path and went inland to the pretty village of Weybourne. It was still raining, so we sheltered in the bus shelter by the Church before crossing the road to catch our bus, which splashed its way back to Wells. In the evening, we had a lovely meal at the Crown Hotel - better reviews (and justifiably good) than Ollies and less pretentious than the Globe.
