“Rolling into #Happisburgh I discovered it to be one of those ever-eroding coastal villages that you hear of when some poor soul’s house falls over a cliff. The campsite was deserted but, clearly, it was possible to walk down the field & straight over the cliff. I did consider camping on the cliff top but imagined waking up to find myself, Kathy (my SatNav) & the Truck, all three of us dead, at the bottom of the cliff so I decided to err on the side of survival.
After dinner, I spent the evening in The Hill House Inn which was warm & cosy with good ales overhearing conversations of the patrons. There seemed to be a mix of locals and what seemed to be a group of engineers & geologists discussing coastal erosion while looking at a lap top. I imagined what it might be like to travel the country examining geology, taking surveys by day & spending the evening in a pub before retiring to a cosy bed & breakfast.
Waking in the morning the Khyam was still pitched on the gentle slope looking out to sea with nothing to obstruct the view. I could have walked 200 yards forward, straight over the edge of the cliff apparently without even a fence to protect the unwary. There might have been a fence once but, what with all the land slips recently, it was probably floating somewhere in the North Sea or being used to make that driftwood art that you can buy at craft fairs from girls called Melinda with frizzy hair.”
Abridged extract from In SatNav We Trust – A search for meaning through the historic counties of England, through ideas or science and belief, all the while searching for meaning and a bed for the night. Or was that the other way around?
Find out more here: https://jack-barrow.com/travelogue-in-satnav-we-trust/