When Heidi the dog

(all together now—aaaaah!) takes me for a walk, we usually get to the beach by going down the end of the street and cutting through a stretch of woodland called Links Wood

and across a playing field. But if you go down to Links Wood and look around, you’ll be in for a big surprise. For attached to a retaining wall (it now holds up the country club) just to the right of the view above, you’ll see this rather astonishing blue plaque…

Apologies for the scruffiness of the photo – the notice reads

THE SEX PISTOLS
played their penultimate British gig to a
capacity crowd of fans and police at the
Links Pavilion that stood near this site,
Christmas Eve 1977.

Really, it’s amazing what you can find on a walk around Cromer.

The Links Pavilion was, of old, a magnet for well-known bands keen to try out a show away from the metropolitan spotlight—but with a guarantee of an enthusiastic and (presumably) uncritical audience of Norfolk residents starved of much entertainment. The event is still remembered in Norfolk more than 30 years later, by the impresario who brought the Pistols to deepest Norfolk, and by the people who went to the gig.

Don’t go looking for the Links Pavilion now, though – it’s not there any more. It burned down just three months after the Pistols played there. Apart from that blue plaque, nothing beside remains. Round the decay of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare, the lone and level sands stretch far away.