It was on an overcast day in July 2004 that we returned to the Norfolk Coast and the village of Winterton. Our aim was to check out a few lighthouses we had missed on our first jaunt around the entire English coast.
Abandoning my father's beaten up van, we emerged on the eastern side of the village to find ourselves in a valley of sand and grass between the dunes and the bank upon which Winterton stands. It looked as though the village had been tricked into thinking it had a sea view!
We climbed the bank to find ourselves surrounded by little round thatch-roofed holiday chalets painted in pastel shades of green, blue and pink, looking like a Celtic hilltop village. Each little pot was crowned with its own miniature TV aerial, which made my father chuckle. When asked why, he replied that he was wondering what the ancient Brythons would make of TV programmes such as ‘Teletubbies’.
Continuing through to more conventional holiday residences, the sound of children splashing mirthfully in the swimming pool drifted through the air. Striding over a wire-mesh fence, we found a drive leading to the 62-foot off-white tower with black balcony and black top, now a private residence with its windows dotted randomly up the tower. The window in the large light chamber consists of ‘Georgian’ style squares. This light ceased to operate in 1921, effectively retiring at the tender age of 61.
I glanced at the shoreline from the row of dunes while my dad returned to the van. The dozen or so tiny specks of human life scattered across the sandy shore seemed to look my way the moment I trained the video camera upon this tranquil scene, no doubt cussing about voyeurs.
Next we would return to Lowestoft to check out a couple of lights we had earlier dismissed as beacons.
We bypassed Caister and continued into Great Yarmouth along a four-lane suburban road that has remained this way since my visits as a child. Beyond the town, to the south, the A12 resembles an urban motorway with huge concrete walls steering the dual carriageway through the urban landscape. Upon reaching Lowestoft, this road is a completely different affair, being split off around the town’s narrow streets and often having to defer to the bridge if it is raised to allow a boat to navigate the River Waveney.
This occasional exercise in patience obviously does not go down well, as my dad made the minor mistake of being in the wrong lane here. We were virtually bulldozed off of the road by a 4X4. Such vehicles, designed to be the automotive equivalent of a mountain bike, seem to be most often found around school gates in term time, with ‘off road’ meaning nothing more than parking on the kerb at kiddies’ home time! If you own a 'jeep', please excuse the satire.
In the year that had preceded our visit, Lowestoft had been catapulted to fame, being the hometown of the now defunct rock incarnation The Darkness, a kind of 'Queen' tribute band if you haven't heard them!
The only ‘rocks’ for us today were in our hearts, for the two structures at the end of the north and south piers were, by our own description, lighthouses and not the mere beacons we had dismissed them as before. Shame on us - our tally of missed lights was now up to three.
Guarding the egress of the River Waveney, both structures consist of a thin hexagonal tower with a small balcony at the base and light compartment at the top. The towers both fan out into a canopy supported by six poles.
The southerly lighthouse has a blue door adorned with a yellow sign declaring ‘Protect ears when foghorn sounds’. There was also a red buoyancy aid labelled ‘Theft costs lives’. The northerly one had no such instructions and was merely hovered around by industrial cranes and industrious seagulls. These lights have occupied their respective spots since 1847.
We had hovered long enough, and predictably we popped into the nearby Harbour Inn to sample the Oulton Broad beer. Certain mates of mine (who now renounce pub culture in favour of 'bringing up baby') a few years ago would have cracked a joke about real ale being ditch-water upon hearing such a name. We had no such hang-ups and struck up a conversation with a lively 60-year-old Essex man who informed us that there were two nightclubs upstairs. This youthful chap also dropped in the information that at his recently celebrated birthday bash a very attractive 'kissogram' had performed for him. Enough said.
Feeling much enlightened, we felt that it was time to ogle the town and found an unusally named road called ‘Economy Street’ (presumably the opposite of ‘Quality Street’). To be honest, some of the streets south of the river didn't exactly look salubrious, but we decided to turn a blind eye and tried to get board at a hotel advertising twin rooms at £35.
Our negotiations were conducted via an intercom beside a firmly locked red paint-chipped door - the sort of thing you might find at a block of flats. The reply to our rquests was initially ‘yes’, but was quickly changed to ‘no’. It seemed we did not make the grade to stay at ‘Hotel Fort Knox’ or even ‘Chez Doss House’!
After this snub, we parked our bags in a perfectly adequate guest-house and wandered down to the arrow-straight pedestrianised High Street. Behind us, a gaggle of teenage girls were laughing uncontrollably, whilst in front a gang of trainee youths were determinedly blasting a football into the shop windows and pulverizing the council’s thoughtfully provided bushes, sending a flurry of leaves into the air with each stroke.
Traffic, it seems, is often the life-blood of town centres, for as the police cars whizzed around the one-way systems, this centralised pedestrian area had the feel of a ghetto. Perhaps the frenetic gyrating on the periphery is the cause of this. All that traffic spinning round and round must create a vortex of concentric energy, sending out shock waves to the town’s youth. Or so a Feng Shui expert would have us believe.
Uninspired, we returned to the Harbour Inn, and tucked into a healthy salad whilst observing the epithet that strangely, unlike Eastbourne and Bournemouth that are sometimes described as ‘God’s waiting room’, Lowestoft could more be likened, to an imp’s playground!
Clearing our plates and draining our glasses, we decided it was time to return to the serenity of the harbour. The lights were now lit - the northerly one green; the southerly one red, and the sun set over the sailing boats gently bobbing on the swell - a sobering sight, away from the hurly-burly of the UK’s most easterly town, and we returned placidly to sup a final vittle before bed.
After almost dismissing this particular pub because of its garish exterior, we found ourselves seated at the bar, behind which were mirrors, lights and ornamentation that gleamed in an almost mesmerising manner. Or so it must have seemed to the patrons who sat there, glued to their seats staring, in the way that children are attracted to the constantly flashing lights of the fruit machines.
My father struck up a conversation with a tripper from East London who was sitting next to us, dipping a toe into the conversational water as us Brits do, testing the response to some innocuous remark and then gradually wading deeper until both parties open up. It was when this genial fellow had disappeared to the loo, that my dad asked me who he reminded me of. I couldn’t quite put my finger on it, but when the answer ‘Tommy Cooper’ was given and our friend returned, it became apparent ‘just like that’.
This gentleman looked like Tommy Cooper, laughed like Tommy Cooper and most of his sentences disintegrated into a wheezy guffaw just like Tommy Cooper’s. Best of all though, at ‘last orders’ he treated us to a round of drinks, and I noted that this was the only time anybody had bought us a drink on all of our missions. Now that’s what I call entertainment!
* * * * *
The final challenge begins in Bicester, a small town in Buckinghamshire, where you find my father and I enjoying a cup of coffee with the lady who prints our books.
We were on our way to Chester, and I had cajoled my father into using a road formerly known as the A41. This highway, which has had almost as many name changes as the pop-star Prince, used to be the tenth longest road in Britain, before it was unceremoniously cut up, with much of it repackaged as a B-road, cunningly named the B4100 in the hope that drivers wouldn't spot that the route still existed.
Passing through Banbury, we glimpsed its famous cross and pondered the nursery rhyme of yore. There are three theories about who the ‘fine lady’ actually was. One is that she was Lady Godiva, another was that she was Elizabeth I and a less intriguing one is that she was just a local girl in a May Day parade.
A little further on we found a suitable layby for lunch. Strands of cobweb glinted in the warm sunshine, seemingly unattached to anything, floating impossibly in mid air, undisturbed by either wind-rustled branch or speeding juggernaut.
Beyond Birmingham, the A41 resurfaced under its own name and proceeded to bore us to tears all the way to Chester. The only thing that broke the monotony was what appeared to be a moving road-sign trundling along the road towrads Chester. We eventually realised that it was just a lorry with a green back and a logo the shape of a road junction.
Now, Chester comes from the Roman word ‘castra’ meaning a fortified camp. Its city wall is the most complete encirclement in the UK and its first incarnation was as a wooden wall in 70AD, before being rebuilt in stone thirty years later. Over the years it has been rebuilt and renovated by successive generations, with the Victorians mercilessly ploughing a railway through a corner of it, creating a kind of precursor to Spaghetti Junction, channelling a canal around it in the process.
Our hotel was located right next to the wall and looked out over the River Dee, just as Edward I might have done when he used the Norman castle as a base for his conquest of Wales.
Completing one lap of the wall makes for a great introduction to Chester. Beyond the castle one encounters the racecourse, located on land which was once the riverbed. Further round is the cathedral and beyond this, the Eastgate tower which was topped off with a clock in 1897.
Just as we were completing our circuit, we spotted a pub with blackboards outside declaring it to be ‘The English pub at its very best – nominated in the top six city pubs in Britain’, prompting us to come down from the wall and venture inside.
The interior was resplendant with old advertising signs for Coleman’s starch, Guinness and the like. We ordered a couple of haggis oatcakes and my dad sparked up the dreaded weed. I expect there was an ancient advertisement somewhere declaring this habit to be ‘good for you’.
After this, it was time to pierce our way into the city centre itself, and as we wandered up Lower Bridge Street a man was itinerantly hassling passers by for cigarettes. My father obliged and our amiable beggar then wandered off to pounce on somebody else.
Just then an almighty bang reverberated through the night air. A car was now heading straight towards us, careering backwards down the road. As a cloud of white ‘smoke’ filled the air, a panic-stricken woman on the point of hyperventilation ran towards us and panted ‘Have you got a phone? Please phone the police’. Naturally we obliged.
We stood around until the law arrived at the scene of this head-on crash. It seemed fairly clear to us that ‘driving without shoes’ had played a part in this unfortunate occurrence. Our work was now done and we decided to quietly slink away to look at The Rows, these being Chester’s unique and ancient method of saving valuable town centre land by building one row of shops on top of another - a kind of Mediaeval shopping precinct.
Our final stop was at ‘The Bear and Billet’, a pub which used to be a tollhouse. After draining our pints of Okell’s Manx ale, it was only fitting to take a wander across the river, which foamed in a trance-inducive manner beneath the orange floodlights. There was little to see on the other side of the bridge, so we soon reneged to our room in the Recorder Hotel, and I climbed into my curtained bed which we had christened ‘the boudoir’ and crashed (a bit like those cars really!).
Eraly next morning we took a wander down the stone steps to the riverside in the cool sunlight, clocking the man swigging from a bottle secreted in a brown paper bag.
Our breakfast was impressive, with both black and white pudding added to the array of fried comestibles.
Our road onto the Wirral reminded me of driving in the USA, being a fairly flat dual carriageway through a semi-suburban landscape, with traffic lights at every intersection and no roundabouts to be seen. Yet, a detour from the main drag briefly transported us into a surprisingly rural area where cyclists seemed to outnumber vehicles. Bliss!
We were headed for Bidston Hill, a high point right in the middle of the wide Wirral peninsular. With the sea perhaps two miles distant in three directions, this was hardly the kind of place you would expect to find a lighthouse.
We parked next to an area of public greenery, and followed a footpath through a small wood. The trail soon emerged onto a stony plateau. Ahead was a windmill surrounded by scaffolding, and beyond this, a great view all the way across to the tower blocks of Liverpool on the other side of the River Mersey. To the left we could identify the coastal suburbs of Leesowe, overlooked by its lighthouse, which reflected the cheery sunlight back at us across the miles of fresh air.
It was just beyond an observatory, clearly well-used judging from the number of cars parked beside it, that we found the chubby round tower of greyish brown bricks that we were looking for. Above the door was the date ‘1873’ and the moniker ‘Mersey Dock Estate’. This was the date that the lighthouse was completed, replacing an older structure built in 1771.
There are two rows of windows arranged neatly one above the other in the tower of the 68-foot-high structure. The light chamber is surrounded by a balcony and has a white top. Although the light ceased to operate in 1913, it was shown for a one off ‘millennium’ event in the year 2000.
Before we left the Wirral, we paid another visit to Leesowe, to discover that the tall lighthouse had been ‘doshed up’ with a new coat of white paint since our first visit, and there were now plans for an information centre to be constructed as an extension.
The clean up exercise for our mission had become a very disparate affair, with our next lighthouse being located at Burry Port in South Wales, so a long journey southward ensued as we plunged in and out of Wales, eventually pausing for a ‘Yuk’ break by a farm gate along a lane just beyond Welshpool.
* * * * *
Our southward journey continued via Montgomery (a small town which once gave its name to a whole county) towards the Shropshire town of Bishop’s Castle.
Beyond this we discovered that Clun, where my aunt and uncle used to live, had lost none of its charm since our last visit. Overlooked by its castle ruins, the narrow stone bridge with inlets for pedestrians to shelter from the traffic remains the centre-piece of this little town. The River Clun gives its name to many villages along its course, as extolled in the oft-quoted couplet:
Clunton, Clungunford, Clunbury and Clun,
Are the quietest places under the sun.
Whenever I hear this I think of poor old Aston on Clun which doesn't even get a mention in the verse.
The road climbs steeply out of the valley and provides fine ‘patchwork quilt’ views descending to New Invention (a fine name for a hamlet if ever there was one). Next up was the border town of Knighton.
Beyond this, the scenery becomes plainer again and I began to nod off, leaving my father to negotiate the route without any navigational assistance.
There was no possibility of sleeping as we crossed the rickety wooden toll bridge to Hay-on-Wye though. This small Welsh town is something of a literary Mecca with an annual book festival, and streets that allegedly once boasted around thirty bookshops. I would estimate that the figure is around half of this today, but in such a diminutive place, such a concentration of outlets still seems rather surreal.
It all began in 1961 when the first second-hand bookshop opened its doors. It was in 1977 that things were given a real boost, with the self-proclaimed ‘King of Hay’ declaring the town’s independence from the rest of the UK as a publicity stunt on April fool’s day.
As we entered our guesthouse, the lady seemed quite curt to begin with. We deposited our bags and after some more 'narcolepsy', it was time for a brew.
The landlord pulled us two pints of Wood’s Shropshire ale and we reclined at the bar where a gentleman, no doubt used an the endless stream of obscure literary characters passing through, struck up conversation with us.
Having been given a platform to extol the virtues of our challenge, we cast our minds back to the very first night we had spent in Fowey, Cornwall after visiting our first lighthouse back in 1999, not realising the gauntlet we had laid down for ourselves.
Picking up on this, our friend proudly declared himself to be Cornish born and bred. This was a shrewd move, appearing to test the authenticity of our discourse. We had clearly passed the test, for just before he left the bar he informed us that he was nothing to do with Cornwall and was in fact the local butcher.
I had printed off some propaganda for our first book before embarking on this trip, and now posted these flyers through the doors of every bookshop I encountered. Just as struggling musicians head for the gold-paved streets of London (and normally end up sleeping on them), writers head for Hay.
Our second alehouse had pre-empted the in-coming smoking ban by already operating a 'no sparking up' policy. This immediately got my father’s back up, and we took our pints outside, while he compared smokers to various persecuted minorities!
Our third and final drinking den had a distinct air of yuppiedom about it, but sadly for us, no aroma of hot food. It was 8.50pm and the kitchen was most definitely closed.
Instead we prepared ourselves for a mouth-watering feast of fish and chips. Our hearts sank to find the lights all out and the door firmly bolted at the chip shop. Our only hope now was a Chinese takeaway.
Surreptitiously we sneaked our purchases back to our room like smugglers concealing their stash. In the absence of plates, we scooped the contents out of the foil containers onto saucers, and wolfed them down using plastic forks. Sheer decadence!
And so, the moral of all this, is that unless you enjoy eating your food off of a piece of china with a four-inch diameter, you need to get to Hay before all the food is put to bed. In short, make Hay while the sun shines. Boom Boom!
Next morning, my dad got up just after 7, which wasn’t at all helpful as breakfast wasn’t served until 8.30. Yet it was still me who took root in the dining room first, and a lady author from Hastings asked me how we were coping with all the Welsh place-names.
As we left, we admired the pretty garden and its array of colourful flowers ranging from red through orange to a golden yellow.
As we continued, it amazed me that the road through Hay, which had begun as a clattering wooden bridge over the River Wye, gradually morphed in an A-road and then into an expedient section of the north/south A470 trunk road, and finally into the dual carriageway A40 bypassing Brecon. From little acorns…
I was keen to travel down to the coast via one of the Welsh valleys, but my dad was having none of it. Beyond Llandeilo, we used a straggling network of B-roads via some fairly large villages to get reach Burry Port, where we found our way to a car park beside the harbour and wandered straight out along the quayside to our final lighthouse in the cool breeze.
This 1842 tower is located at the westerly entrance to the harbour and is a chubby, white-painted brick affair. There is a black balcony surrounding a small, red, hexagonal light compartment. The lighthouse was donated to the yacht club by Trinity House in 1996, and its light could be seen for nine miles.
Across the water, we could clearly see the tin tower at Whitford Point which was famously sold for one pound with a ‘golden handcuffs’ contract to maintain it in the early noughties (as I believe fashionable people call the decade).
Feeling invigorated, we decided to call in at the yacht club. A handful of members were sitting down chatting quietly over a cup of coffee.
We learned much during our ten minutes in the clubhouse, including the fact that a large sum of money had recently been poured into the harbour (not literally I hasten to add), with a new road constructed along the seafront and a cycleway towards Llanelli.
And that really was the end of the road for us.
If you have enjoyed these chapters 'England and Wales in a Flash' documents our visits to 153 lighthouses around the mainland coast, combining this with a satirical look at the nation we saw at the turn of the millennium. The book is available on Amazon and from all good bookshops
New for 2011 is the sequel – 'Bordering on Lunacy' which documents our visits to lighthouses in the Scottish Lowlands and our journey along the border in search of haunted astles.
- Adam and Roger Colton
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