Happisburgh Beach

We drove over to Cromer late yesterday afternoon. The beach there is a mess with huge concert blocks on it which are being used to strengthen the sea defences, so there was no point taking any photos of the beach. While the town has some lovely Victorian buildings, they are all a bit jaded now. So many English have fond memories of family holidays in Cromer as a child, as it used to be such a vibrant popular place to holiday, but nowadays I find it a very sad place with an air of past it's best. The hotel we stayed in was not cheap and it was terrible. We had supper in the hotel and then headed up to our room to get an earlyish night. Cromer is not the kind of place I wish to return to again. It was very busy with people on holiday, there was a queue for a certain fish and chip shop that went all the way down the road, I presume it had a good Tripadvisor rating.

Unfortunately I had a very bad night's sleep. I set my alarm for 4am but as is typical when I need to get up early for something, I woke up at the ridiculous hour of 1.30am and never fell asleep again, so it goes without saying that I am feeling shattered today. I left the hotel at 4am and went to photograph the famous pier as I hoped it would be prettily illuminated - it wasn't, and at that very early hour there were two young men lurking around who made me feel nervous so I hurriedly took one photo and rushed back to my parked car.

It was about a 40 minute drive to Happisburgh (pronounced Haze - borough) where I met the photo leader Gill and the four other people on this morning's photography session. It was very windy but thankfully not cold. We walked down on to the beach where there is a long series of broken posts from the old sea defences, and they make great subjects to photograph. It is a long beach so we could spread out and all do our own thing. Gill was excellent and walked up and down the beach checking on us to see whether we needed any guidance. The sunrise was hardly noteworthy but we had a great time taking long exposures of the waves crashing around the posts. After a couple of hours of that we went back to the car park where Gill and her husband served tea/coffee and bacon rolls from their camper van for breakfast (I had brought my own overnight oats due to food intolerances). 

We photographed the famous lighthouse for a while and then went back down on to the beach as now the tide was going out, so we could get different shots of the posts. We all finished up at about 11am when I went back to Cromer to collect Gavin and Xena and then we headed back to Brancaster Staithe.

Adam and Anna arrived last night, and Tommy drove to Cambridge to get Inca and also collect Luke and Meriel from the station as they had got the train there from London. They arrived late morning and we have enjoyed catching up one everyone's news all afternoon. We are going out for the birthday supper in a while, not sure if I will be able to stay awake, and ditto for Inca who has been on night shift all week at the vet school - we will be scintillating company tonight!

I have very quickly edited a few images to post here - sorry but I won't have time for journals today.